Details of the Royal Opera House’s 2017/18 Season have been announced. Oliver Mears, who will begin his tenure as Director of Opera, comments:
“I am delighted to introduce my first Season as Director of Opera for The Royal Opera House. As I begin this role, and as the world continues to reel from social and political tumult, it is reassuring to contemplate the talent and traditions that underpin this great building’s history. For centuries, a theatre on this site has welcomed all classes – even in times of revolution and war – to enjoy the most extraordinary combination of music and drama ever devised. Since the time of Handel, Covent Garden has been home to the most outstanding performers, composers and artists of every era. And for centuries, the joyous and often tragic art form of opera has offered a means by which we can be transported to another world, in all its wonderful excess and beauty.”
Year: 2017
The Royal Opera House announces its 2017/18 season
St Matthew Passion: Armonico Consort and Ian Bostridge
Whatever one’s own religious or spiritual beliefs, Bach’s St Matthew Passion is one of the most, perhaps the most, affecting depictions of the torturous final episodes of Jesus Christ’s mortal life on earth: simultaneously harrowing and beautiful, juxtaposing tender stillness with tragic urgency.
Pop Art with Abdellah Lasri in Berliner Staatsoper’s marvelous La bohème
Lindy Hume’s sensational La bohème at the Berliner
Staatsoper brings out the moxie in Puccini. Abdellah Lasri emerged as a
stunning discovery. He floored me with his tenor voice through which he
embodied a perfect Rodolfo.
New opera Caliban banal and wearisome
Listening to Moritz Eggert’s Caliban is the equivalent of
watching a flea-ridden dog chasing its own tail for one-and-half hours. It
scratches, twitches and yelps. Occasionally, it blinks pleadingly, but you
can’t bring yourself to care for such a foolish animal and its
less-than-tragic plight.
Two rarities from the Early Opera Company at the Wigmore Hall
A large audience packed into the Wigmore Hall to hear the two Baroque rarities featured in this melodious performance by Christian Curnyn’s Early Opera Company. One was by the most distinguished ‘home-grown’ eighteenth-century musician, whose music – excepting some of the lively symphonies – remains seldom performed. The other was the work of a Saxon who – despite a few ups and downs in his relationship with the ‘natives’ – made London his home for forty-five years and invented that so English of genres, the dramatic oratorio.
The “Lost” Songs of Morfydd Owen
A new recording, made late last year, Morfydd Owen : Portrait of a Lost Icon, from T? Cerdd, specialists in Welsh music, reveals Owen as one of the more distinctive voices in British music of her era : a grand claim but not without foundation. To this day, Owen’s tally of prizes awarded by the Royal Academy of Music remains unrivalled.
Enchanting Tales at L A Opera
On March 24, 2017, Los Angeles Opera revived its co-production of Jacques Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann which has also been seen at the Mariinsky Opera in Leningrad and the Washington National Opera in the District of Columbia.
Ermonela Jaho in a stunning Butterfly at Covent Garden
Ermonela Jaho is fast becoming a favourite of Covent Garden audiences, following her acclaimed appearances in the House as MimÏ, Manon and Suor Angelica, and on the evidence of this terrific performance as Puccini’s Japanese ingÈnue, Cio-Cio-San, it’s easy to understand why. Taking the title role in the first of two casts for this fifth revival of Moshe Leiser’s and Patrice Caurier’s 2003 production of Madame Butterfly, Jaho was every inch the love-sick 15-year-old: innocent, fresh, vulnerable, her hope unfaltering, her heart unwavering.
Brave but flawed world premiere: Fortress Europe in Amsterdam
Calliope Tsoupaki’s latest opera, Fortress Europe, premiered
as spring began taming the winter storms in the Mediterranean.
New Sussex Opera: A Village Romeo and Juliet
To celebrate its 40th anniversary New Sussex Opera has set itself the challenge of bringing together the six scenes – sometimes described as six discrete ‘tone poems’ – which form Delius’s A Village Romeo and Juliet into a coherent musico-dramatic narrative.