21 Feb 2005

Wozzeck at WNO

FIRST nights of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck are not traditionally sellouts, but then this was anything but a traditional first night. As the main event of Welsh National Opera’s inaugural weekend in its new home, the Wales Millennium Centre at Cardiff Bay, Saturday night’s performance sent out a volley of positive signals that will stand the company in good stead as it builds new audiences. There are more seats to fill than in WNO’s old house, but a strong forthcoming season combined with adventurous pricing policy should prolong the buzz.

Wozzeck

John Allison at Wales Millenium Centre [Times Online, 21 Feb 05]

FIRST nights of Alban Berg's Wozzeck are not traditionally sellouts, but then this was anything but a traditional first night.

As the main event of Welsh National Opera's inaugural weekend in its new home, the Wales Millennium Centre at Cardiff Bay, Saturday night's performance sent out a volley of positive signals that will stand the company in good stead as it builds new audiences. There are more seats to fill than in WNO's old house, but a strong forthcoming season combined with adventurous pricing policy should prolong the buzz.

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A Dark Tale of Humanity in Waves of Pity and Terror

By PAUL GRIFFITHS [NY Times, 21 Feb 05]

CARDIFF, Wales, Feb. 20 - For most of its 59-year history, the Welsh National Opera has been looking forward to having a theater built for it here in the capital city of Wales. Now that hope has been fulfilled. On Saturday the company presented its first production made for its new home, the Wales Millennium Center: Alban Berg's "Wozzeck," in a performance that lived up to the occasion in every way. Whether the theater did so is less certain.

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Night at altar of popularity

By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 21 Feb 05]

With the first night of Welsh National Opera's new production of Wozzeck on Saturday, the final block in the edifice of Cardiff's #106m arts complex fell into place. The Wales Millennium Centre, which dominates a thriving business and leisure development at the seafront, is bright, spacious and flawlessly egalitarian. Covered by a bronze shell, clad in Welsh slate and commanding the eye with a massive inscription that reads "In these stones horizons sing", the building has succeeded since its official opening in November to be all things to all men.

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Crushed to death under a hill of beans

[Daily Telegraph, 21 Feb 05]

Rupert Christiansen reviews Wozzeck performed by the WNO at the Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff

Shocking the audience is an over-used tactic in the business of opera production, and one that pays swiftly diminishing returns - when Calixto Bieito grinds out his umpteenth coke-fuelled orgy, all we do is yawn.

But surprising the audience is a vital element of good theatre (at its most basic level, it's what keeps us awake), and one of the things I most deeply admire in Richard Jones's recent work is its arresting poetic strangeness: it's impossible to anticipate either its starting point or the journey it will take.

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