Billy Budd in Genoa
An English opera in Italy? What next: Eccles cake in the pasticceria? But if you are going to perform Billy Budd in Italy, there could be nowhere better than Genoa. In the first act, the sailors sing lustily “we’re off…
Bellini’s I Puritani in Turin
In Italy you might encounter simple productions, eccentric productions, daring productions … but they will generally be good to look at. So it was with I Puritani at the Teatro Regio in Turin. The opera has fine music, some impressive…
Tippett’s Ice Break in Birmingham
Tippett’s The Ice Break is more often written about than performed and it is not difficult to understand why. Though the music has energy and, being predominantly lyrical, falls gratefully on the ear, the plot is chaotic and the libretto…
Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix in Giessen
Fortunately, it happens sometimes. You have a ticket for an opera about a poor country girl who, removed to Paris, is set up in a luxury apartment by her aristocratic lover. She loses her reason when she is falsely accused…
The Tatarstan State Opera’s Carmen
At the end of a talk which I gave last year on the evolution of staging operas, I was asked by a member of the audience whether I had seen a traditional production of Carmen in recent years. The answer…
L’Orontea by Cesti in Frankfurt
First we discovered Monteverdi, then Cavalli; now Cesti who like his Venetian contemporaries wrote moralistic comic pieces set in classical times, love and lust generally triumphing over reason and sobriety. The Frankfurt staging of L’Orontea was my first encounter with…
Teseo at the Karlsruhe Handel Festival
Although we in Britain claim Handel as our own and have been responsible for many revivals of his operas in recent years, there are important Händel (as he should be called) festivals in Germany; in Halle (his birthplace, Göttingen and…
Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride in Geneva
Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride is a noble piece in which the composer eliminates the trills and frills of the baroque for a simple but intense and moving recreation of the Greek original. Sadly, its presentation at Geneva’s Grand Théâtre was…
Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Medea in Basel
I am familiar with Euripides’ play Medea and have been impressed by performances of Cherubini’s opera based on it, but I did not anticipate the huge impact made by Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s version recently presented at Basel. The work itself is…
Donizetti’s Viva la Mamma in Biel
Donizetti’s comic piece Le convenienze ed il convenienze teatrali, a parody of the 19th century opera world is tremendous fun. Perhaps the reason why it is not often performed is its unwieldy title which can be translated as “The Conventions…
My Opera Highlights 2014
DIRECTORS Giorgio Barberio Corsetti & Pierrick Sorin: La Pietra del Paragone, Paris Châtelet Balazs Kovalik: Die Frau ohne Schatten, Leipzig; and Blood Wedding, Budapest DESIGNERS Giorgio Barberio Corsetti & Pierrick Sorin: La Pietra del Paragone, Paris Châtelet Chantal Thomas:…
Friedenstag by Richard Strauss in Kaiserslautern
Friedenstag by Richard Strauss is a rarity. Why? The music is attractive and dramatic, in a Wagnerian mode, even if at times a little too obvious, as when it seeks to communicate militaristic ideals. The final chorus is, indeed, highly…
Ravel/Stravinsky Double Bill in Karlsruhe
In Karlsruhe for an apparently appealing pairing of Ravel’s L’Enfant et les Sortilèges and Stravinsky’s Rossignol. The presentation purported to find in these two works a common response to the tragedy of World War I. To see Ravel’s child and…
Performances of Janáček and Szokolay in Central Europe
Two shortish operas from Central Europe seen in Central Europe: Janáček’s Cunning Little Vixen at the Staatsoper Vienna and (less familiar to Western Europeans) Szokolay’s Blood Wedding in Budapest. Both were played without an interval, so we were out of…
Monteverdi’s Poppea and Handel’s Ottone in Yorkshire
Those who complain when the settings of opera are updated to a modern period would have benefited from comparing the productions of two baroque operas performed in Yorkshire this week: Opera North with Monteverdi’s Coronation of Poppea at Leeds and…
Chabrier’s L’etoile in Amsterdam
It was not a large audience at Amsterdam’s Musiektheater for Chabrier’s comic piece L’Etoile and the absentees missed a treat. The music is, of course, witty and inventive, but it needs finesse in the orchestra pit, idiomatic singing, well spoken…
Opera North’s Traviata
Seven out ten for Opera North’s new production of La Traviata. Alessandro Talevi is a skilled director and when he concentrated on the drama between the main characters his staging was very effective. But the video showing tuberculosis and other…
Rigoletto at Covent Garden with Keenlyside
When a production of a popular opera has been in the company repertory for a number of years, and has had several revivals designed to show off the talents of major international artists, it tends to lose its originality, and…
Rossini’s Inganno Felice at La Fenice
It is always a pleasure to return to La Fenice, for me the most beautiful opera house in the world. The one-act early opera by Rossini, L’inganno felice, was a welcome departure from the conventional repertory. Although subtitled “farsa per…
Madame X by Tim Benjamin
Tim Benjamin is obviously a talented composer. In 1998 I admired his one-act opera The Bridge, composed when he was only 22. And now we have Madame X, performed in Halifax on its way to the festival of new opera…