Stendhal (as recorded in his Life of Rossini) was not a fan of Rossini’s La Cenerentola, complaining that after the first few bars of the Introduzione he was already suffering from a ‘faint feeling of nausea’, a condition which ‘never entirely dissipated, [recurring] periodically throughout the opera, and with increasing violence’.
Year: 2019
Music In The Present Tense: Rossini’s Italian Operas in Their Time
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo43988096.html
La traviata at the Arena di Verona
There is esoteric opera — 16,500 spectators at this year’s Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, and there is pop opera — upwards of 500,000 spectators for the opera festival at the Arena di Verona, one quarter of them for an over-the-top new production of La traviata, designed and directed by Franco Zeffirelli.
Sir John Eliot Gardiner brings Benvenuto Cellini to the Proms
Berlioz’ Benvenuto Cellini is quite rarity on UK stages. Covent Garden last performed it in 1976 and English National Opera performed it for the first time in 2014 (in Terry Gilliam’s riotous production), and yet the opera never quite goes away either.
Prom 58: varied narratives from the BBCSSO and Ilan Volkov
There are many ways and means to tell a story: through prose, poetry, sounds, pictures, colours, movement.
Prom 53: Elgar’s emotionally charged Music Makers
British music with an English and strong European accent marked this Prom featuring three well-wrought works, stylistically worlds apart but each characterised by a highly individual musical personality.
Scoring a Century: British Youth Opera at the Peacock Theatre
‘It is well known that Eisler was a master of the art of self-contradiction, using non-sequitur, change of tack and playing devil’s advocate in a brilliantly ironic way in an attempt to look at a problem from every angle, to expose it fully to the gaze of his interlocutor. For an ordinary person to take part in this, let alone keep up with the pace and fully appreciate the wide range of references, which his enormous reading threw out, was wonderfully stimulating, and exhausting.’
Louise Jeffreys to become Deputy Chair of ENO
English National Opera (ENO) is pleased to announce that Louise Jeffreys is to become Deputy Chair of English National Opera and the London Coliseum. She replaces Nicholas Allan. Louise is…