Double Bill of Aleko and Pagliacci in Opava
The charming little Silesian town of Opava has a population of only 60,000 yet still maintains a permanent opera ensemble, which tells you much about the state of culture in this part of the world. Rachmaninov’s Aleko, new to me,…
Smetana’s Secret in Ostrava
The Secret is a typically bucolic piece by Smetana, telling the tale of a young man Kalina who had won the love of Róza but lost her when her father disapproved of the match because he was not wealthy. Rather…
Don Carlo in Brno
Don Carlo contains some of Verdi’s finest and most inventive music to underpin the drama of the encounters between the principal characters but it also poses problems in performance because its various themes – thwarted love, individual liberty, State versus…
Cordoliani’s staging of Die Entführung at Rheims
Sometimes one is at a production which takes an innovative approach to a familiar work and during the earlier part of the evening the predominant response is one of irritation, whether this results from the weight of tradition affecting one’s…
My Operatic Highlights 2018
DIRECTORS Olivier Py: Dialogues des Carmélites, Caen Stephen Medcalf: Idomeneo, Buxton DESIGNERS Markus Lüpertz/Ruth Gross: Una cosa rara, Regensburg Pierre-André Weitz: Dialogues des Carmélites, Caen CONDUCTORS Daniele Gatti: Rigoletto, Rome Ulf Schirmer: Ring des Nibelungen, Leipzig SINGERS…
Kaťa Kabanová at San Carlo, Naples
The Teatro San Carlo in Naples might not seem to be the most obvious venue for a performance of Janáček’s Kaťa Kabanová, but the opera company’s music director Juraj Valčuha is Slovakian, the production by Willy Decker was imported from…
Rigoletto at the Rome Opera
Rigoletto is such a familiar piece that directors wanting to leave their imprint on it are tempted to turn it into something grotesque, vulgar or – worse still – trivial. Not so Daniele Abbado at the Rome Opera. Although he…
Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Anna Nicole in Nuremberg
Mark-Anthony Turnage’s opera Anna Nicole tells the story of a woman from a dysfunctional Texan family who, to achieve success as a stripper, has her breasts enlarged. Initially experiencing success and marriage to an elderly oil billionaire, her life subsequently,…
Rossini’s Barber in Nuremberg
Rossini’s Barbiere di Siviglia is so familiar that one tends to underrate its qualities both as a musical composition and as theatrical comedy. Its brilliant rhythmic patterns and melodic charms are combined with acute characterisation and amusing interplay. Modern commentators…
Una Cosa Rara by Martín y Soler in Regensburg
The Spaniard Vicente Martín y Soler was a contemporary of Mozart and indeed the musical style of the two composers is remarkably similar. Both had a gift for melody and a sense of fun while not excluding darker colours and…
Donizetti’s Anna Bolena in Passau
Anna Bolena, one of Donizetti’s operas on the Tudors, performed in Passau but with an English director/designer, Ultz, as well as an English conductor, Basil Coleman. You might have thought that this augured well for an authentic presentation of English…
Prokofiev’s War and Peace at the WNO
Prokofiev’s War and Peace is not the masterpiece which it could have been. Relative to the Tolstoy original, the first half focuses too much on Natasha, while the second, because of the need to placate Stalin’s regime, contains too much…
A Verismo Double Bill at Wexford
After disappointments this year at Wexford, the festival ended for me on a brighter note with a well-fashioned, solid double bill of verismo opera. No; not Cav and Pag but Leoni’s L’oracolo and Giordano’s Mala Vita. The Leoni is a torrid…
Mercadante’s Il Bravo at the Wexford Festival
Let it be said at once that Mercadante’s opera Il bravo is fundamentally unrevivable; and the Wexford Festival should be congratulated – or otherwise – for its attempt (bravo!). The plot is unbelievably contorted and complex. After a fourth reading…
Bolcom’s Dinner at Eight in Wexford
Dinner at Eight, the play by Georges Kaufmann and Edna Ferber, famously filmed by George Cukor, provides a good source for the opera, premiered in Minnesota last year and given its first European performance at Wexford. It provides a biting…
UK première of Moniuszko’s Raftsman
When one’s operatic excursion is off the beaten track in two different senses – a rare work in an unknown venue – there are definitely risks involved. But the UK première of Moniuszko’s Flis (The Raftsman) was too tempting to…
Eötvös’ Three Sisters in Frankfurt
Tri Sestry (Three Sisters), based on Chekhov’s play, is Peter Eötvös’ first and, hitherto, most successful opera. My appetite for experiencing the current performance at the Frankfurt Oper was whetted by a recent visit to Pforzheim for his Goldene Drache…
Die Meistersinger in Wiesbaden
Die Meistersinger in Wiesbaden? Understandably, most Wagner-lovers prefer performances at the bigger, more prestigious, opera houses, but there are sometimes benefits from attending those in – shall we call them – the second division. Of course, one is unlikely to…
Madama Butterfly in Kiev
Attending recently two performances of Madama Butterfly in countries of the former Soviet Union has made me reflect on how this opera has been, and can be, presented. The production in Vilnius, seen in January 2017 was not homegrown but…
Idomeneo at the Buxton Festival
Some performances of Idomeneo induce me to the heretical conclusion that it is Mozart’s greatest opera – the Buxton Festival’s current offering was one of them. Musically, the piece is extraordinarily rich, particularly the orchestral writing which, with the high…