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A great big guy in a great big fur coat falls in love with the photo of the worldly daughter of a compulsive gambler. A great big conductor promotes the maelstrom of great big music that shepherds all this to ecstatic conclusion.
The miasma of doom that pervades the air of the great house of Bly seems to seep slowly into the auditorium, dulling the senses, weighing down the mind. What evil lurks here? Can these people be saved? Do we care?
Ten years ago, I saw one of the first performances of Pascal Dusapin’s Passion at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. Now, Music Theatre Wales and National Dance Company Wales give the opera its first United Kingdom production - in an English translation by Amanda Holden from the original Italian: the first time, I believe, that a Dusapin opera has been performed in translation. (I shall admit to a slight disappointment that it was not in Welsh: maybe next time.)
The story was bigger than its actors, the Tosca ritual was ignored. It wasn’t a Tosca for the ages though maybe it was (San Francisco’s previous Tosca production hung around for 95 years). P.S. It was an evening of powerful theater, and incidentally it was really good opera.
At the very least, that vehement, pacifist indictment against militarism, Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, should leave the audience shaking a little. This performance by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra only partially succeeded in doing so. The cast credits raised the highest expectations, but Gianandrea Noseda, stepping in for an ailing Mariss Jansons and conducting the RCO for the first time, did not bring out the full potential at his disposal.
In their typical non-emphatic way, the Tallis Scholars under Peter Phillips presented here a selection of English sacred music from the Eton Choirbook to Tallis. There was little to ruffle anyone’s feathers here, little in the way of overt ‘interpretation’ – certainly in a modern sense – but ample opportunity to appreciate the mastery on offer in this music, its remoteness from many of our present concerns, and some fine singing.
“Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.” Well, the spectral Queen of Carthage atop the poppy-strewn sarcophagus wasn’t quite yet “laid in earth”, but the act of remembering, and remembrance, duly began during the first part of this final instalment of the Academy of Ancient Music’s Purcell trilogy at the Barbican Hall.
Mozart Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) at La Monnaie /De Munt, Brussels, conducted by Antonello Manacorda, directed by Romeo Castellucci. Part allegory, part Singspeile, and very much a morality play, Die Zauberflöte is not conventional opera in the late 19th century style. Naturalist realism is not what it's meant to be. Cryptic is closer to what it might mean.
How do you begin to assess Covent Garden’s Siegfried? From a purely vocal point of view, this was a magnificent evening; it’s hard not to reach the conclusion that this was as fine a cast as you are likely to hear anywhere today.
The concept of the monologue in opera has existed since the birth of opera itself, but when we come to monodramas - with the exception of Rousseau’s Pygmalion (1762) - we are looking at something that originated at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Femme fatale, femme nouvelle, she-devil: the personification of patriarchal castration-anxiety and misogynistic terror of female desire.
Palestrina led from the front, literally and figuratively, in this performance at Wigmore Hall which placed devotion to the saints at its heart, with Saints Peter, Paul, Catherine of Alexandria, Bartholomew and the Virgin Mary all musically honoured by The Cardinall’s Musick and their director Andrew Carwood.
Opera’s triple crown, Donizetti’s tragic queens — Anna Bolena who was beheaded by her husband Henry VIII, their daughter Elizabeth I who beheaded her rival Mary, Queen of Scots and who executed her lover Roberto Devereux.
Opera Philadelphia is lightening up the fare at its annual festival with a three evening cabaret series in the Theatre of Living Arts, Queens of the Night.
How to begin to quantify the wonderment stirred in my soul by Opera Philadelphia’s sensational achievement that is Glass Handel?
The September sunshine that warmed Wigmore Street during Monday’s lunch-hour created the perfect ambience for this thoughtfully compiled programme of seventeenth- and twentieth-century English song presented by soprano Lucy Crowe and pianist Joseph Middleton at Wigmore Hall.
Opera Philadelphia has mounted as gripping and musically ravishing an account of Lucia di Lammermoor as is imaginable.
In Opera Philadelphia’s re-imagined La voix humaine, diva Patricia Racette had a tough “act” to follow ...
Opera Philadelphia’s annual festival set the bar very high even by its own gold standard, with a troubling but mesmerizing world premiere, Sky on Wings.
Sir Simon Rattle and the London Symphony Orchestra marked the opening of the 2018-2019 season with a blast. Literally, for Sir Harrison Birtwistle's new piece Donum Simoni MMXVIII was an explosion of brass — four trumpets, trombones, horns and tuba, bursting into the Barbican Hall. When Sir Harry makes a statement, he makes it big and bold !
![Elizabeth DeShong as Rosina [Photo by Craig T Matthew]](http://www.operatoday.com/Barber-public-15146-530.jpg)
Saturday, February 28, 2015, was the first night for Los Angeles Opera’s revival of its 2009 presentation of The Barber of Seville, a production by Emilio Sagi, which comes originally from Teatro Real in Madrid in cooperation with Lisbon’s Teatro San Carlos. Sagi and onsite director, Trevor Ross, made comedy the focus of their production and provided myriad sight gags which kept the audience laughing.
Author and playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais wrote a trilogy about the Almaviva family: Le Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville), Le Mariage de Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), and La Mère Coupable (The Guilty Mother). Los Angeles Opera presented operas based on the Beaumarchais trilogy during its 2014-2015 season, but not in the order of their composition. 1786 saw the premiere of Le Nozze di Figaro, (The Marriage of Figaro) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Gioachino Rossini wrote his opera, originally entitled Almaviva, o sia L'inutile precauzione (Almaviva or the Useless Precaution), on the play Le Barbier de Séville in 1816, and it was not until 1991 that John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles, inspired by La Mère Coupable, saw the light of day.
In January, Los Angeles Opera gave us Figaro 90210, an opera that uses Mozart’s music but has an updated take on the libretto. Angelinos saw the premieres of The Ghosts of Versailles and The Barber of Seville in February and will see performances of The Marriage of Figaro in March and April.
René Barbera as Count Almaviva
Saturday, February 28, 2015, was the first night for Los Angeles Opera’s revival of its 2009 presentation of The Barber of Seville, a production by Emilio Sagi, which comes originally from Teatro Real in Madrid in cooperation with Lisbon’s Teatro San Carlos. Sagi and onsite director, Trevor Ross, made comedy the focus of their production and provided myriad sight gags which kept the audience laughing.
Dancers and supers pulled Llorenç Corbella’s lightweight, light colored scenery around the stage as part of Nuria Castejón’s inventive choreography. Numerous dancers who served as townspeople and servants were part of every scene, which gave this Spanish production a particular Flamenco ambiance. As was true of the rest of the visual aspects of the show, Renata Schussheim’s costumes were black and white for all but the colorful finale in which Count Almaviva and Rosina wear bright pink for their departure in a magnificent hot air balloon.
Tenor René Barbera was a lighthearted Count who sang with the utmost in precise coloratura. Elizabeth DeShong is new to Los Angeles, but she has already sung major mezzo-soprano coloratura roles at Covent Garden, the Metropolitan and the Vienna State Operas. The possessor of a distinctive timbre, her waves of vocal color filled the hall with beauty. Baritone Rodion Pogossov, who was the Papageno in Los Angeles Opera’s 2013 presentation of The Magic Flute, was a robust Figaro who convinced the audience that his presence was irreplaceable.
Finale: Elizabeth DeShong as Rosina, and René Barbera as Count Almaviva, are about to take off in the balloon
Alessandro Corbelli was a blustering Doctor Bartolo while Kristinn Sigmundsson was a conniving Don Basilio whose "La calunnia è un venticello" showed the dark toned resonance of his huge bass voice. Lucy Schaufer was a most amusing Berta, Jonathan Michie an energetic Fiorello, and Frederick Ballentine an enormously nervous sergeant. Chorus Director Grant Gershon’s men sang with alacrity and moved so well that it was hard to tell them from the dancers.
Tamara Sanikidze, who played the accompaniment for the recitatives on the fortepiano, shaped every phrase with taste. Conductor James Conlon mentioned in his pre performance lecture that the production of this Rossini opera he saw as a young boy influenced his decision to spend his life in music. On this evening he imbued the instrumental surfaces of the music with luminous subtleties while holding stage and pit together with bonds of pure musicality. Los Angeles Opera’s Barber of Seville was a treat for both eye and ear.
Maria Nockin
Cast and production information:
Fiorello, Jonathan Michie; Count Almaviva, René Barbera; Figaro, Rodion Pogossov; Rosina, Elizabeth DeShong; Doctor Bartolo, Alessandro Corbelli; Don Basilio, Kristinn Sigmundsson; Berta, Lucy Schaufer; Sergeant, Frederick Ballentine; Conductor, James Conlon; Production, Emilio Sagi; Director Trevor Ross; Scenery Designer, Llorenç Corbello; Costume Designer, Renata Schussheim; Lighting Designer, Eduardo Bravo; Chorus Director, Grant Gershon; Choreographer, Nuria Castejón; Fortepiano, Tamara Sanikidze.