“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.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro has a libretto by Lorenzo daPonte based on the French play La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (The Crazy Day or the Marriage of Figaro) by Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799).
For its world class Easter Festival, Baden-Baden mounted a Die Zauberflöte that owed more to the grey penitential doldrums of Lent than to the unbridled jubilance of re-birth.
Once Berkeley Opera, renamed West Edge Opera, this enterprising company offers the Bay Area’s only serious alternative to corporate opera, to wit Bonjour M. Gauguin.
In the first of pianist Julius Drake’s three-part series, ‘Perspectives’, our gaze was directed at Gustav Mahler’s eclectic musical responses to human experiences: from the trauma and distress of anguished love to the sweet contentment of true friendship, from the agonised introspection of the artist to the diverse dramas of human interaction.
The Los Angeles opera company marketed its spring production of Rossini's La Cenerentola as Cinderella though there is no opera by that name. The libretto of La Cenerentola is not the Cinderella story we know.
The Paris Opéra has not staged a full Ring Cycle since 1957, but its current season will conclude with a correction of this grand operatic gap.
Washington National’s 2012-2013 season continues this spring with a production of Giacomo Puccini’s first successful opera.
The death this month of director Stephen Pimlott could have cast a shadow over this revival of his 1993 production, but a hugely affectionate pre-show tribute by colleague Nicholas Hytner ensured that the performance only served to do great honour to the memory of a man who was clearly loved and cherished by many.
The first night of this revival, directed by Ian Rutherford, did the late director proud. Following a
triumph in the role on Glyndebourne’s 2005 tour, Peter Auty’s Rodolfo was physically and
vocally full of youthful ardour, while as Mimì, Mary Plazas combined the looks of a china doll
with the vocal warmth and personality of a flesh-and-blood young woman. 
Mark Stone’s
Marcello was masculine and glamorous, with every word projected clearly; there was real
passion in the ‘big moment’ when he takes up the melody in Musetta’s aria. Giselle Allen’s
portrayal of Musetta was quite remarkable, a young woman full of promise brought to her knees
by miserable poverty, and the exceptional bass Matthew Rose made much of his role as Colline,
creating a moment of stillness and awe with his Act 4 aria.
Musically the performance was not entirely successful. Conductor Xian Zhang had a mixed evening with tempi which were at times so measured that they almost ground to a halt, but seemed to have a particular affinity with Plazas in her arias, and as the tragedy reached its conclusion, grew in expressive breadth. A balance problem between pit and stage in the first act caused whole passages of solo singing to become inaudible, but this was seemingly addressed in due course as the issue was no longer apparent after the interval.
However on stage there was diligent attention to detail; a piece of luxury casting found Robert Poulton singing the dual roles of Benoit and Alcindoro, which he contrasted with two very different styles of seediness. The crowded stage of Act 2 felt like a genuine public gathering, with a particularly convincing children’s chorus; the simultaneous duets of Act 3 were well-defined and audible alongside one another. A few minor anomalies in the production’s updating to the mid-20th century can be forgiven in the overall scheme of a staging which continues to feel immediate and ‘real’.
One would hope – and expect – that Pimlott would have been well pleased with this touching and
credible realisation of his enduringly popular production.
Ruth Elleson, February 26th 2007