Rossini’s La donna del Lago at the Royal Opera House boasts a superstar cast. Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez are perhaps the best in these roles in the business at this time. Yet the conductor Michele Mariotti is also hot news.
It would seem a logical step for the mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey to take on the role of the Composer in Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos.
“Aim for excellence”, says Douglas Boyd, new Artistic Director of Garsington Opera at Wormsley, “and the audience will follow you”.
When I spoke with Zandra Rhodes, she was in her large San Diego workspace, which she described as having walls decorated with her own huge black and white drawings.
Palm Beach audiences are famous for their glamour, but in recent years a special star has sparkled amid the jewels, sequins, feathers and furs (whatever the weather).
When the soprano Jessica Pratt first arrived in Italy, she had yet to learn the language or sing in a staged opera.
On Wednesday evening, February 20, Los Angeles Opera gave a press conference at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion featuring Music Director James Conlon.
It is another “What Could Have Been” moment. The debut of Brokeback Mountain by Charles Wuorinen is part of Madridʼs Teatro Real coming season.
Plans for July’s Aix-en-Provence Festival were announced and opera is, of course, at the center of the program with a particularly noteworthy Richard Strauss production.
Amsterdam enjoys a rare visit from Moscow’s Stanislavski Opera at the landmark Koninklijk Carre Theater, for three performances of Tchaikovski’s Eugene Onegin and a Sunday morning opera concert, on February 1st-3rd.
A new festival hall has been inaugurated in the small town of Erl in the Tyrolean mountains.
Yesterday, Conductor Riccardo Muti opened the Rome Opera, where he is “honorary conductor for life,” with a gala presentation of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra.
When tenor Michael Spyres takes the stage at Carnegie Hall on December 5th, he will be in heady company.
One of the most noteworthy and controversial productions in recent memory arrived in Belgium with hurricane force as Director Terry Gilliam’s inaugural opera, an inspired interpretation of Hector Berlioz’s Le Damnation de Faust, blasted into Ghent, followed by a run in Antwerp.
Florian Boesch is singing Schubert’s Die Schöne Müllerin at the Oxford Lieder Festival on Sunday 14th October. This won’t be routine. Radically challenging conventional interpretation, Boesch says “I don’t believe it ends in suicide”
Exciting developments at Glyndebourne ! Many new initiatives which could transform Glyndebourne from a summer festival to a truly international, year-round opera experience.
The recently released numbers for the past season at Barcelona’s opera Liceu gives some hope for the future.
A record 278,978 people attended events of the 2012 edition of the famed Salzburg Festival in Austria, the largest number since its founding 92 years ago.
Just after things were settling after the scandal of baritone Evgeny Nitikin supposed swastika tattoo at the Bayreuth Festival, another one seems likely to take its place.
Three quarters of the way through this discussion, a question that inhabits the mind of anyone putting any thought to the subject — but no one dare ask — was rhetoricised, “what is opera?”
![Dalibor Jenis [Photo by Vladimir Yurkovic]](http://www.operatoday.com/dalibor-jenis.gif)
“Everything in opera comes from Italy”, says Dalibor Jenis, who sings Renato in the current Royal Opera House Un ballo in maschera. “Italian is the language of music, my second mother language”
Bratislava-born Jenis was drawn to opera from a very early age, singing Mozart from the age of 19. He’s since become an Italian opera specialist, having in his repertoire roles like Germont, Don Carlo, Don Giovanni, Figaro, and many others. Renato is a particular favourite. “The role is very full, emotionally. Renato and Riccardo are good friends and good men, but everything changes from white to black. And then in the third act, the aria ‘Eri tu’, it’s so full of feeling. Renato is remembering the past happiness even when he’s in a tragic situation. He’s full of anger, yet he loves Amelia and is torn with different emotions. It is such wonderful music”.
Jenis first sang the part in Germany in a production where rehearsal time was limited, and the soprano changed. It wasn’t easy to develop the role and he was anxious. Yet once he started to sing it, everything came together naturally. He’s now sung the part many times, including Berlin and Vienna. The more he sings it, the more he finds in the character. “It’s like a vision, when you open a door and see a new room, so many interesting things to hear”.
This London production is especially rewarding. He was very impressed when he saw how the ball scene is staged. “It’s a very strong moment”, he says, for it’s the climax of the opera, and extremely dramatic. There’s a huge mirror which reflects the action, intensifying the dramatic impact. “When I first saw it, I was quite surprised at first but now I understand how perfect it is. There is movement everywhere. When Renato stabs Riccardo, those close by are frozen in shock. But elsewhere people are moving, running about, speaking quickly. It’s like two different worlds, happening at the same time”. Those closest to the killing are traumatized, while others move in agitation. “This is one of the best productions”, adds Jenis with enthusiasm.
The conductor is Maurizio Benini, with whom Jenis has worked for many years. “He’s a very good conductor because he knows what we singers need, it’s very natural. The orchestra at the Royal Opera House is one of the best in the world. When they play, it’s like every one of them is a concert master. For us singers, it’s great motivation to hear such good musicians”. Benini is good to work with because he gets on well with the cast and listens to what they feel. “It’s team work”, says Jenis. “It’s so good to have a conductor who is responsive. We can discuss things and find compromises because we respect each other”.
In his forties, Jenis is maturing well. New roles await : he wants to sing Rigoletto and Il Trovatore, for example. He’ll soon be singing a gala concert in Dresden of arias from these operas. “I like complicated characters like these” he says, “because they are interesting”.
“I think acting is as important as singing. Years ago, you could have fat singers who didn’t move much on stage but had wonderful voices and everyone was happy. Now people expect more.” Jenis is interested in the way small details and movement can make a characterization stronger. “I search every role to find moments when I can express things better”. Sometimes it’s as simple as changing position subtly. “I don’t like to be like a machine, doing exactly the same thing every time”, he says. “In life, things change all the time”. This keeps performance fresh and natural. “Even when we’re not singing, there is a connection between singers, which an audience can feel very clearly”.
Good acting isn’t all obvious movement. When Jenis was very young, he watched a Carmen, where the mezzo was in her mid fifties. She sang the Habanera so effectively that she was utterly convincing without having to overact. “She was so strong, she didn’t have to move a lot or “be sexy”, she acted with her face and her voice. I said to myself, “This is Carmen”.
Singing at the Royal Opera House means a lot to Jenis. He first visited when he wife was singing in Kát’a Kabanová. He was greatly impressed. “It looked wonderful and the orchestra played so well. I thought, “what a pleasure it would be to sing here”. To date, he’s sung at Covent Garden several times, in La Bohème, Cosi fan tutte, Madama Butterfly and Faust, the latter with Maestro Bellini and Ramón Vargas, with whom he’ll be creating this Un ballo.
“It’s such a pleasure to work in London at this house”, he says, “Because there is such a high level of professionalism, at all levels. We singers feel that they are all behind us, not just the musicians but all the staff. It’s so well organized and everyone takes responsibility and does their best. So we do our best, too”.
Anne Ozorio
Un ballo in maschera runs from 26th June to 17th July 2009 at the Royal Opera House, London.