Recently in Performances
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.
Performances
28 Jan 2005
Poppea at Palais Garnier
Parisians do not like camp. David McVicar’s production of Monteverdi’s last opera was jeered in October at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées and now David Alden has met the same fate. This is unfair because his use of radical kitsch is altogether more sophisticated and his manipulation of the singers faultlessly choreographed. In any case, this classic staging dates from 1997, when it was first seen in Cardiff and Munich. McVicar’s approach now looks like a pale copy of an industry template.
L'incoronazione di Poppea Paris Opera (Garnier)
By Francis Carlin [Financial Times]
Published: January 28 2005 02:00 | Last updated: January 28 2005 02:00
Parisians do not like camp. David McVicar's production of Monteverdi's last opera was jeered in October at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées and now David Alden has met the same fate. This is unfair because his use of radical kitsch is altogether more sophisticated and his manipulation of the singers faultlessly choreographed. In any case, this classic staging dates from 1997, when it was first seen in Cardiff and Munich. McVicar's approach now looks like a pale copy of an industry template.
Click here for remainder of review.
Un Monteverdi shakespearien
[28 janvier 2005] [Le Figaro]
Les premières se suivent et ne se ressemblent pas à l'Opéra de Paris. Le surlendemain d'une pénible Flute enchantée, Gérard Mortier nous invitait à un grand moment de fascination théâtrale avec le Couronnement de Poppée de Monteverdi, dans une mise en scène de David Alden qui avait déjà triomphé à Munich. Dans les fascinants décors de Paul Steinberg (ce damier aux perspectives fuyantes !), Alden réalise une mise en scène formidablement musicale, ou chaque geste est en adéquation avec le rythme dramatique de Monteverdi. Dans une sorte de palace de luxe stylisé, les personnages habillés à la façon jet set du XXe siècle, existent avec une force d'attraction et de répulsion irrésistible. De chanteurs d'opéra, on a fait de grands acteurs, capables de jouer la comédie et la tragédie, le burlesque et la violence : un jeu physique et sensuel, c'est bien le moins pour le plus érotique des opéras du répertoire.
Ce Néron hagard, incapable de maîtriser ses pulsions, cette Poppée femme fatale qui le tient sous sa dépendance sexuelle et mène les autres par le bout du nez, ces femmes au bord de la crise de nerfs qui cassent leur talon, on ne les oubliera pas. Alden en fait des figures shakespeariennes, n'hésitant pas à outrer ce mélange des genres qui rend Monteverdi si audacieux. Mais Alden reste attentif au point d'équilibre entre grotesque et gravité, entre onirisme et réalisme. Le personnage de Sénèque retrouve ainsi le juste dosage entre véritable compassion et raillerie d'un philosophe alcoolique et sentencieux, dont les disciples serviles notent chaque phrase avec une frénésie ridicule. Bien des images nous resteront, non pour leur seule beauté plastique, mais pour leur expressivité : quand le décor s'évacue pour laisser Poppée s'endormir sur fond vert (magnifiques lumières de Pat Collins), quand Octavie fait ses adieux nus pieds en robe noire, quand l'horloge de Chronos vient surveiller les amants réunis, le temps suspend son vol.
Click here for remainder of review.