The 23-year-old Giacomo Puccini was still three months from the end of his studies at the Conservatoire in Milan when, in April 1883, he spotted an announcement of a competition for a one-act opera in Il teatro illustrato, a journal was published by Edoardo Sonzogno, the Italian publisher of Bizet’s Carmen.
Year: 2019
Little magic in Zauberland at the ROH’s Linbury Theatre
To try to conceive of Schumann’s Dichterliebe as a unified formal entity is to deny the song cycle its essential meaning. For, its formal ambiguities, its disintegrations, its sudden breaks in both textual image and musical sound are the very embodiment of the early Romantic aesthetic of fragmentation.
Donizetti’s Don Pasquale packs a psychological punch at the ROH
Is Donizetti’s Don Pasquale a charming comedy with a satirical punch, or a sharp psychological study of the irresolvable conflicts of human existence?
Chelsea Opera Group perform Verdi’s first comic opera: Un giorno di regno
Until Verdi turned his attention to Shakespeare’s Fat Knight in 1893, Il giorno di regno (A King for a Day), first performed at La Scala in 1840, was the composer’s only comic opera.
Liszt: O lieb! – Lieder and MÈlodie
O Lieb! presents the lieder of Franz Liszt with a distinctive spark from Cyrille Dubois and Tristan RaÎs, from ApartÈ. Though young, Dubois is very highly regarded. His voice has a luminous natural elegance, ideal for the MÈlodie and French operatic repertoire he does so well. With these settings by Franz Liszt, Dubois brings out the refinement and sophistication of Liszt’s approach to song.
A humourless hike to Hades: Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld at ENO
Q. “Is there an art form you don’t relate to?” A. “Opera. It’s a dreadful sound – it just doesn’t sound like the human voice.”
Welsh National Opera revive glorious Cunning Little Vixen
First unveiled in 1980, this celebrated WNO production shows no sign of running out of steam. Thanks to director David Pountney and revival director Elaine Tyler-Hall, this Vixen has become a classic, its wide appeal owing much to the late Maria Bj¯rnson’s colourful costumes and picture book designs (superbly lit by Nick Chelton) which still gladden the eye after nearly forty years with their cinematic detail and pre-echoes of Teletubbies.
Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia at Lyric Opera of Chicago
With a charmingly detailed revival of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia Lyric Opera of Chicago has opened its 2019-2020 season. The company has assembled a cast clearly well-schooled in the craft of stage movement, the action tumbling with lively motion throughout individual solo numbers and ensembles.
Romantic lieder at Wigmore Hall: Elizabeth Watts and Julius Drake
When she won the Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize in the 2007 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition, soprano Elizabeth Watts placed rarely performed songs by a female composer, Elizabeth Maconchy, alongside Austro-German lieder from the late nineteenth century.
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.