For the centenary of Finland’s Independence, the Savonlinna Opera Festival brought back Kari Heiskanen’s spectacular 1992 production of Aulis Salinen’s Kullervo. The excellent Finnish soloists and glorious choir unflinchingly offered this opera of vocal blood and guts. Conductor Hannu Lintu fired up the Savonlinna Opera Festival Orchestra in Sallinen’s thrilling music.
Year: 2017
K·t’a Kabanov· at Investec Opera Holland Park
If there was any doubt of the insignificance of mankind in the face of the forces of Nature, then Yannis Thavoris’ design for Olivia Fuchs production of Jan·?ek’s K·t’a Kabanov· – first seen at Investec Opera Holland Park in 2009 – would puncture it in a flash, figuratively and literally.
A bel canto feast at Cadogan Hall
The bel canto repertoire requires stylish singing, with beautiful tone and elegant phrasing. Strength must be allied with grace in order to coast the vocal peaks with unflawed legato; flexibility blended with accuracy ensures the most bravura passages are negotiated with apparent ease.
Don Pasquale: a cold-hearted comedy at Glyndebourne
Director Mariame ClÈment’s Don Pasquale, first seen during the 2011 tour and staged in the house in 2013, treads a fine line between realism and artifice.
Billy Budd Indomitable in Des Moines
It is hard to know where to begin to praise the peerless accomplishment that is Des Moines Metro Opera’s staggeringly powerful Billy Budd.
Tannhäuser at Munich
Romeo Castellucci’s aesthetic — if one may speak in the singular
— is very different from almost anything else on show in the opera house
at the moment. That, I have no doubt, is unquestionably a good thing.
Castellucci is a serious artist and it is all too easy for any of us to become
stuck in an artistic rut, congratulating ourselves not only on our
understanding but also, may God help us, our ‘taste’ —
as if so trivial a notion had something to do with anything other than
ourselves.
Des Moines Answers Turandot’s Riddles
With Turandot, Des Moines Metro Opera operated from the premise of prima la voce, and if the no-holds-barred singing and rhapsodic playing didn’t send shivers down your spine, well, you were at the wrong address.
Maria Visits Des Moines
With an atmospheric, crackling performance of Astor Piazzolla’s Maria de Buenos Aires, Des Moines Metro Opera once again set off creative sparks with its Second Stage concept.
Die schˆne M¸llerin: Davies and Drake provoke fresh thoughts at Middle Temple Hall
Schubert wrote Die schˆne M¸llerin (1824) for a tenor (or soprano) range – that of his own voice. Wilhelm M¸ller’s poems depict the youthful unsophistication of a country lad who, wandering with carefree unworldliness besides a burbling stream, comes upon a watermill, espies the miller’s fetching daughter and promptly falls in love – only to be disillusioned when she spurns him for a virile hunter. So, perhaps the tenor voice possesses the requisite combination of lightness and yearning to convey this trajectory from guileless innocence to disenchantment and dejection.
World Premiere of Aulis Sallinen’s Castle in the Water Savonlinna Opera Festival
For my first trip to Finland, I flew from Helsinki to the east, close to the border of Russia near St. Petersburg over many of Suomi’s thousand lakes, where the summer getaway Savonlinna lays. Right after the solstice during July and early August, the town’s opera festival offers high quality productions. In this enchanting locale in the midst of peaceful nature, the sky at dusk after the mesmerising sunset fades away is worth the trip alone!