Dulce Rosa, a brand new opera, had its world premiere Friday night, May 17, 2013 at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica, California. It was produced by Los Angeles Opera, but staged in the smaller theater.
Richard Jones’ 2009 production of Verdi’s Falstaff translates the action from the first Elizabethan age to the start of the second.
Baritone Gareth John is rapidly accumulating a war-chest of honours. Winner of the 2013 Kathleen Ferrier Award, he recently won the Royal Academy of Music Patrons’ Award and was presented the Silver Medal by the Worshipful Company of Musicians.
This second revival of Jonathan Miller’s La bohème was the first time I had caught the production.
It’s Verdi’s bicentenary year and Rolando Villazón has two new CDs to plug — titled somewhat confusingly, ‘Villazón: Verdi’ and ‘Villazón’s Verdi’, the latter a ‘personal selection’ of favourite numbers performed by stars of the past and present.
Nicola Luisotti and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra climbed out of the War Memorial pit, braved the wind whipped bay and held spellbound an audience at Cal Performances’ Zellerbach Auditorium at UC Berkeley.
Utterly mad but absolutely right — Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos started the Glyndebourne 2013 season with an explosion. Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. Ariadne auf Naxos is not “about” Greek myth so much as a satire on art and the way art is made.
“Man is an abyss. It makes one dizzy to look into it.” So utters Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, repeating what was also a recurring motif in the playwright’s own letters.
National Opera Company of the Rhine has marked this year’s Benjamin Britten celebration with a remarkably compelling, often gripping new production of the seldom-seen Owen Wingrave.
Once upon a time, Frankfurt Opera had the baddest ass reputation in Germany as “the” cutting edge producer of must-see opera.
Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto can serve as a vehicle for individual singers to make a strong impression and become afterward associated with specific roles in the opera.
Just in case we were not aware that the evening’s programme was ‘themed’, the Britten Sinfonia designed a visual accompaniment to their musical exploration of night, sleep and dreams.
Poor Aida! She never seems to have anything go her way.
Is it possible to upstage Jonas Kaufmann? Kaufmann was brilliant in this Verdi Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House, London, but the rest of the cast was so good that he was but first among equals. Don Carlo is a vehicle for stars, but this time the stars were everyone on stage and in the pit. Even the solo arias, glorious as they are, grow organically out of perfect ensemble. This was a performance that brought out the true beauty of Verdi's music.
The big names were absent: Duparc, D’Indy, Debussy, Ravel … and while Fauré, Chausson, Roussel and several members of Les Six put in an appearance, in less than familiar guises, this survey of French song of the early 20th century and interwar years deliberately took us on a journey through infrequently travelled terrain.
Composed between 1718 and 1720, Handel’s Esther is sometimes described as the ‘first English Oratorio’, but is in fact a hybrid form, mixing elements of oratorio, masque, pastoral and opera.
Hector Berlioz's légende dramatique, La Damnation de Faust, exists somewhere between cantata and opera. Berlioz's flexible attitude to dramatic form made the piece unworkable on the stages of early 19th century Paris and his music is so vivid that you wonder whether the piece needs staging at all.
St. John’s Smith Square was the site of Elizabeth Connell’s final London concert, intended as a farewell to London on her moving to Australia. It was rendered ultimately final by her unexpected death.
With the building of the Suez Canal, Egypt became more interesting to Western Europeans. Khedive Ismail Pasha wanted a hymn by Verdi for the opening of a new opera house in Cairo, but the composer said he did not write occasional pieces.
Back for its fourth revival, David McVicar’s 2003 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte has much charm, beauty and artistry.
Covent Garden: über 193 Stufen nach Walhall VON PETRA HAIDERER Mit "Rheingold" begann der neue "Ring"-Zyklus in Londons Covent Garden Opera - Bryn Terfel sang erstmals den Wotan. This is Covent Garden!", sagt die me lodische Frauenstimme in der Londoner...
Covent Garden: über 193 Stufen nach Walhall
VON PETRA HAIDERER
Mit "Rheingold" begann der neue "Ring"-Zyklus in Londons Covent Garden Opera - Bryn Terfel sang erstmals den Wotan.
This is Covent Garden!", sagt die me lodische Frauenstimme in der Londoner U-Bahn. Die Station der Piccadilly Line rechtfertigt den Namen "Underground" wie keine zweite. 193 Stufen wendelt sich der Opernfreund nach oben. Zwar gibt es einen (zu kleinen) Lift und die Treppe soll laut Ansage nur im Notfall benutzt werden. Doch Jung und Alt drängelt beherzt frischer Luft entgegen.
Auch im Royal Opera House ist der Andrang gross. Die Neuinszenierung von Wagners "Ring" - "Walküre" folgt im März, "Siegfried" und "Götterdämmerung" nächste Saison - ist das grösste Projekt seit der Wiedereröffnung des renovierten Hauses vor fünf Jahren. Der letzte "Ring" unter Bernard Haitink liegt acht Jahre zurück. Seit Wochen ist die Premiere des "Rheingold" ausverkauft. Auf der Homepage des Hauses erzählen die Protagonisten via Videoclip von den Hochs und Tiefs der Probenarbeit - allen voran Bryn Terfel, der erstmals als Wotan auf der Bühne steht.
Am Anfang: das Nichts. Kein Auftrittsapplaus für Dirigent Antonio Pappano. Aus dunkler Stille lässt der musikalische Chef von Covent Garden Wagners einleitende, schier endlose Es-Dur-Harmonie emporwachsen. Pappano unterstreicht vor allem das Lyrische, sucht das Kammermusikalische. Die Sänger, ein homogenes Ensemble auf hervorragendem Niveau, singen stets mit exquisiter Wortdeutlichkeit, können sich feinsinnigen Details widmen. Fasolts (Franz-Josef Selig) sachtes Bekenntnis zu des "Weibes Wonne und Wert" - dynamisch und im Tempo fein abgemischt - wird so zu einem besonders berührenden Augenblick.
An die kantige Plastizität von Wagners vielschichtig charakterisierender Klangsprache wagt sich der Maestro aber vielleicht zu vorsichtig heran. Zu sehr ist er offenbar dem reinen Schönklang verpflichtet. Alberich (Günter von Kannen) etwa fehlt die verzweifelte Wucht, das plötzlich hervorbrechende, dann wieder schleichend schwelende Böse, aus dem sich das dräuende Drama zum fatalen Untergang der Götter entwickelt.
[Click here for remainder of review.]