07 Nov 2010
New Adriana Lecouvreur in London — Alessandro Corbelli
A completely new production of Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur is coming to the Royal Opera House, London.
Recently in Interviews
Connections Across Time: Sholto Kynoch on the 2020 Oxford Lieder Festival
‘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.
Alfredo Piatti: The Operatic Fantasies (Vol.2) - in conversation with Adrian Bradbury
‘Signor Piatti in a fantasia on themes from Beatrice di Tenda had also his triumph. Difficulties, declared to be insuperable, were vanquished by him with consummate skill and precision. He certainly is amazing, his tone magnificent, and his style excellent. His resources appear to be inexhaustible; and altogether for variety, it is the greatest specimen of violoncello playing that has been heard in this country.’
Eboracum Baroque - Heroic Handel
Eboracum Baroque is a flexible period instrument ensemble, comprising singers and instrumentalists, which was founded in York - as its name suggests, Eboracum being the name of the Roman fort on the site of present-day York - while artistic director Chris Parsons was at York University.
Schubert 200 : in conversation with Tom Guthrie
‘There could be no happier existence. Each morning he composed something beautiful and each evening he found the most enthusiastic admirers. We gathered in his room - he played and sang to us - we were enthusiastic and afterwards we went to the tavern. We hadn’t a penny but were blissfully happy.’
Soprano Eleanor Dennis performs Beethoven and Schubert at the 2019 Highgate International Chamber Music Festival
When soprano Eleanor Dennis was asked - by Ashok Klouda, one of the founders and co-directors of the Highgate International Chamber Music Festival - to perform some of Beethoven’s Scottish Songs Op.108 at this year’s Festival, as she leafed through the score to make her selection the first thing that struck her was the beauty of the poetry.
Mark Padmore reflects on Britten's Death in Venice
“At the start, one knows ‘bits’ of it,” says tenor Mark Padmore, somewhat wryly, when I meet him at the Stage Door of the Royal Opera House where the tenor has just begun rehearsals for David McVicar’s new production of Death in Venice, which in November will return Britten’s opera to the ROH stage for the first time since 1992.
An interview with Cheryl Frances-Hoad, Oxford Lieder Festival's first Associate Composer
“Trust me, I’m telling you stories …”
In conversation with Nina Brazier
When British opera director Nina Brazier tries to telephone me from Frankfurt, where she is in the middle of rehearsals for a revival of Florentine Klepper’s 2015 production of Martinů’s Julietta, she finds herself - to my embarrassment - ‘blocked’ by my telephone preference settings. The technical hitch is soon solved; but doors, in the UK and Europe, are certainly very much wide open for Nina, who has been described by The Observer as ‘one of Britain’s leading young directors of opera’.
Bill Bankes-Jones on the twelfth Tête à Tête Opera Festival
“We need to stop talking about ‘diversity’ and think instead about ‘inclusivity’,” says Bill Bankes-Jones, when we meet to talk about the forthcoming twelfth Tête à Tête Opera Festival which runs from 24th July to 10th August.
An interview with composer Dani Howard
The young Hong Kong-born British composer Dani Howard is having quite a busy year.
Irish mezzo-soprano Paula Murrihy on Salzburg, Sellars and Singing
For Peter Sellars, Mozart’s Idomeneo is a ‘visionary’ work, a utopian opera centred on a classic struggle between a father and a son written by an angry 25-year-old composer who wanted to show the musical establishment what a new generation could do.
London Bel Canto Festival 2019: an interview with Ken Querns-Langley
“Physiognomy, psychology and technique.” These are the three things that determine the way a singer’s sound is produced, so Ken Querns-Langley explains when we meet in the genteel surroundings of the National Liberal Club, where the training programmes, open masterclasses and performances which will form part the third London Bel Canto Festival will be held from 5th-24th August.
Un ballo in maschera at Investec Opera Holland Park: in conversation with Alison Langer
“Sop. Page, attendant on the King.” So, reads a typical character description of the loyal page Oscar, whose actions, in Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera, unintentionally lead to his monarch’s death. He reveals the costume that King Gustavo is wearing at the masked ball, thus enabling the monarch’s secretary, Anckarstroem, to shoot him. The dying King falls into the faithful Oscar’s arms.
Martin Duncan directs the first UK staging of Offenbach's Fantasio at Garsington
A mournful Princess forced by her father into an arranged marriage. A Prince who laments that no-one loves him for himself, and so exchanges places with his aide-de-camp. A melancholy dreamer who dons a deceased jester’s motley and finds himself imprisoned for impertinence.
Thomas Larcher's The Hunting Gun at the Aldeburgh Festival: in conversation with Peter Schöne
‘Aloneness’ does not immediately seem a likely or fruitful subject for an opera. But, loneliness and isolation - an individual’s inner sphere, which no other human can truly know or enter - are at the core of Yasushi Inoue’s creative expression.
In interview with Polly Graham, Artistic Director of Longborough Festival Opera
What links Wagner’s Das Rheingold, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Cavalli’s La Calisto? It sounds like the sort of question Paul Gambaccini might pose to contestants on BBC Radio 4’s music quiz, Counterpoint.
Six Charlotte Mew Settings: in conversation with composer Kate Whitley
Though she won praise from the literary greats of her day, including Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound and Siegfried Sassoon, the Victorian poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was little-known among the contemporary reading public. When she visited the Poetry Bookshop of Harold Monro, the publisher of her first and only collection, The Farmer’s Bride (1916), she was asked, “Are you Charlotte Mew?” Her reply was characteristically diffident and self-deprecatory: “I’m sorry to say I am.”
"It Lives!": Mark Grey 're-animates' Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
“It lives!” So cries Victor Frankenstein in Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption: or the Fate of Frankenstein on beholding the animation of his creature for the first time. Peake might equally have been describing the novel upon which he had based his 1823 play which, staged at the English Opera House, had such a successful first run that it gave rise to fourteen further adaptations of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novella in the following three years.
Unknown, Remembered: in conversation with Shiva Feshareki
It sounds like a question from a BBC Radio 4 quiz show: what links Handel’s cantata for solo contralto, La Lucrezia, Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, and the post-punk band Joy Division?
Remembering and Representing Dido, Queen of Carthage: an interview with Thomas Guthrie
The first two instalments of the Academy of Ancient Music’s ‘Purcell trilogy’ at the Barbican Hall have posed plentiful questions - creative, cultural and political.
OPERA TODAY ARCHIVES »
Interviews
The whole cast is new to the opera. There's excitement backstage. Alessandro Corbelli speaks about the production in which he sings Michonnet.
“We are all making our debuts this time”, says Corbelli, who has many years of experience, and is well respected. “It’s new for all of us, the conductor (Mark Elder), the stars and the comprimario. Rehearsals started early for the prima on 18th November. “We’re all excited, everything is going well. And it’s set in period with period costumes”. The director is David McVicar and designs are by Charles Edwards.
Corbelli worked with Mark Elder in Linda di Chamounix in September 2009. “I know his way of working. He helps me extract the best from my voice and the character. Everything is based on the music. He knows the Italian language well, and even the different regional accents. That’s very unusual for a non-Italian conductor”.
“This is verismo, Cilea’s music comes from spoken language, very high notes for the soprano, Angela Gheorghiu”. Is Italian the language of music? “I hope so!” smiles Corbelli, whose reputation is built on extensive experience in Italian repertoire.
In Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, Corbelli is singing Michonnet. “Michonnet is the Stage Manager at the Comédie-Française where Adriana is the star. So he has influence and is very involved in how the plot develops. He was Adriana’s teacher, so he knows her very well. He’s in love with her. He wants to show his feelings, but she confides in him that she’s in love with a young Saxon. Michonnet is wounded, but he’s sensitive and caring. He knows he’s much older than Adriana and wants her to be happy. He knows she’s depressed about her love affair. So even though he loves her, he tries to help her by sending a letter to Maurizio”.
“When Michonnet discovers that the Princess de Bouillon is in love with Maurizio, he knows the rivalry will be trouble. He wants to protect Adriana and keep her calm, but it doesn’t work. Adriana explodes with strong emotions. Then the poisoned violets come, and she dies”
“In my opinion”, adds Corbelli, “The Princess is young like Adriana. The Prince is much older and has affairs with other women. So when the Princess falls in love with Maurizio, she can’t stand competition. Michonnet is kind hearted. He’s a good man, but he cannot stop the tragedy”.
Since his debut at the early age of 22, Corbelli has become an outstanding exponent of bel canto and Mozart roles for baritone. He has sung in all the major opera houses, including La Scala since 1989, and The Metropolitan Opera, New York where he debuted in 1997. He is a regular at the Royal Opera House, London where most recently he sang Don Geronio in Il Turco in Italia and Sulpice in La Fille du Regiment. (Please read the respective reviews in Opera Today. here and here)
Next season, he’s singing Taddeo in Paris, Dulcamara in Munich, Don Alfonso in Vienna, Bartolo and Falstaff in Toulouse and Don Pasquale in Santiago de Chile. He’s booked until 2015.
Corbelli is celebrated as a character singer. The ease with which he creates such diverse roles indicates great acting skills. “They didn’t teach that when I was training”, he says. “But I’m always learning, on stage and by watching and listening to others. He’s created both Dandini and Don Magnifico in La Cenerentola, both Don Pasquale and Dr. Malatesta in Don Pasquale. “Of course, not at the same time!”, he bursts out laughing. Good character singing comes from wit and observation.
Anne Ozorio
For more information, please see the Royal Opera House website
Adriana Lecouvreur runs from 18th November to 10th December 2010 and stars Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann, Alessandro Corbelli, Michaela Schuster and Maurizio Muraro.