English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing.
Conductor Oliver Zeffman has commissioned the very first opera for a socially distanced world, which is now available to watch exclusively on Apple Music. Eight Songs From Isolation has been written by eight leading composers, specifically for streaming - rather than live performance - and is the first opera written for a time when the performers were unable to meet in person.
Leading freelance musicians unite in Parliament Square to call for targeted support for colleagues in the arts and entertainment sector.
Duo Lewis Murphy (composer) and Laura Attridge (writer) have launched a charitable song project entitled Notes From Isolation. The resulting songs, featuring some of the UK's top singing talent, are being released online between August and October 2020 and can be enjoyed free of charge.
The Royal Opera House is thrilled to announce an exciting, wide-ranging new line-up for its autumn programme. For the first time, extraordinary performances will be accessible online for a global audience through livestreams and for socially distanced live audiences at our home in Covent Garden. In a global first, we present a new opera in hyper-reality, alongside repertory favourites from both artistic companies.
Some of the most famous and outstanding stars from the opera world are to take part in a very special evening from Wexford Festival Opera, including Aigul Akhmetshina, Joseph Calleja, Daniela Barcellona, Juan Diego Flórez, Igor Golovatenko, Ermonela Jaho, Sergey Romanovsky, and many more.
Following its successful launch in 2019, OperaStreaming streams nine operas on YouTube from the historic opera houses of Emilia-Romagna during the 2020-21 season, with fully-staged productions of Verdi's La traviata in October from Modena and Verdi'sOtello from Bologna in...
‘A brief history of song’ is the subtitle of the 2020 Oxford Lieder Festival (10th-17th October), which will present an ambitious, diverse and imaginative programme of 40 performances and events.
Bampton Classical Opera returns to the Baroque splendour of London’s St John’s Smith Square on November 6 with a concert performance of Gluck’s one-act opera The Crown, the first in the UK since 1987. The performance will also be filmed and available to watch on demand on the Bampton website from 9 November.
While many of us spent lockdown at home taking it a little easier, composer Andrew Synnott wrote an opera.
Owen Wingrave is part of the new Interim Season of 19 brand new events, all free to view online between September and December 2020.
The Arts Council has awarded innovative UK charity Music and Theatre For All (MTFA) a major new grant to develop three ambitious new projects in the wake of Covid 19.
English National Opera (ENO) will reopen the London Coliseum to socially distanced audiences on 6 and 7 November for special performances of Mozart’s Requiem. These will provide audiences with an opportunity to reflect upon and to commemorate the difficulties the nation has faced during the pandemic.
The Royal Opera House is proud to continue its curated #OurHouseToYourHouse programme into the autumn, bringing audiences the best of the ROH through a new series of Friday Premieres and cultural highlights.
After six months of closure, the Royal Opera House is thrilled to be opening its doors to the public as part of Open House London weekend, giving visitors a taste of one of the world’s most famous theatres for free.
The Academy of St Martin in the Fields is thrilled to announce re:connect - an eight concert series with live socially distanced audiences at its namesake church, St. Martin-in-the-Fields. The autumn concerts will take place at 5pm & 7:30pm on two Saturdays per month with guest artists including baritone Roderick Williams, soprano Carolyn Sampson and composer-conductor-pianist Ryan Wigglesworth performing a wide range of repertoire.
Music and poetry unite and collide across centuries, from the Medieval to the Enlightenment to the present day. This year, the Oxford Lieder Festival will present a thrilling and innovative programme comprising more than forty events streamed over eight days.
The English Concert with artistic director Harry Bicket is delighted to announce a series of concerts from 1-15 October 2020. The concerts take place in historic London venues with star soloists and will be performed and streamed live to a paying audience at 7pm GMT on each performance date. The programmes include first-class vocal and instrumental works from the two pillars of the English Baroque, covering different aspects of the repertoire.
Glyndebourne has announced plans for a ‘staycation’ series of socially-distanced indoor performances, starting on 10 October 2020.
The Royal Opera House is delighted to announce two packed evenings of opera and ballet, live from our stage in Covent Garden and available to view wherever you are in the world online.
![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.