?It was the final performance of the premiere season of Darko Tresnjak’s production of Camille Saint-SaÎns’ Samson et Dalila. Four tenors later.†
The Enchantresse and Dido and Aeneas
in Lyon
Dido and Aeneas, Il ritorno d’Ulisse and Tchaikowsky’s L’Enchantresse, the three operas of the OpÈra de Lyon’s annual late March festival all tease destiny. But far more striking than the thematic relationship that motivates this 2019 festival is the derivation of these three productions from the world of hyper-refined theater, far flung hyper-refined theater.
The devil shares the good tunes: Chelsea Opera Group’s Mefistofele
Every man ‘who burns with a thirst for knowledge and life and with curiosity about the nature of good and evil is Faust … [everyone] who aspires to the Unknown, to the Ideal, is Faust’.
La forza del destino at Covent Garden
Prima la music, poi la parole? It’s the perennial operatic conundrum which has exercised composers from Monteverdi, to Salieri, to Strauss. But, on this occasion we were reminded that sometimes the answer is a simple one: Non, prima le voci!
Barbara Hannigan sings Berg and Gershwin at the Barbican Hall
I first heard Barbara Hannigan in 2008.
New perceptions: a Royal Academy Opera double bill
‘Once upon a time …’ So fairy-tales begin, although often they don’t conclude with a ‘happy ever after’. Certainly, both Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta and Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilËges, paired in this Royal Academy Opera double bill, might be said to present transformations from innocence and ignorance to experience and knowledge, but there is little that is saccharine about their protagonists’ journeys from darkness to enlightenment.
Desert Island Delights at the RCM: Offenbach’s Robinson Crusoe
‘Britannia waives the rules: The EU Brexit in quotes’. Such was the headline of a BBC News feature on 28th June 2016. And, nearly three years later, those who watch the runaway Brexit-train hurtle ever nearer to the edge of Dover’s white cliffs might be tempted by the thought of leaving this sceptred (sceptic?) isle, for a life overseas.
Akira Nishimura’s Asters: A Major New Japanese Opera
Opened as recently as 1997, the Opera House of the New National Theatre Tokyo (NNTT) is one of the newest such venues among the world’s great capitals, but, with ten productions of opera a year, ranging from baroque to contemporary, this publicly-owned and run theatre seems determined to make an international impact.
The Outcast in Hamburg
It is a “a musicstallation-theater with video” that had its world premiere at the Mannheim Opera in 2012, revived just now in a new version by Vienna’s ORF Radio-Symphonieorchester Wein for one performance at the Vienna Konzerthaus and one performance in Hamburg’s magnificent Elbphilharmonie (above). Olga Neuwirth’s The Outcast and this rich city are imperfect bedfellows!
Christina Scheppelmann appointed General Director of Seattle Opera
Scheppelmann heads to the Pacific Northwest following leadership roles in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East