Each March France’s splendid OpÈra de Lyon mounts a cycle of operas that speak to a chosen theme. Just now the theme is MÈmoires — mythic productions of famed, now dead, late 20th century stage directors. These directors are Klaus Michael Gr¸ber (1941-2008), Ruth Berghaus (1927-1996), and Heiner M¸ller (1929-1995).
Tag: Milenski
Boris Godunov in Marseille
There has been much reconstruction of Marseille’s magnificent Opera Municipal since it opened in 1787. Most recently a huge fire in 1919 provoked a major, five-year renovation of the hall and stage that reopened in 1924.
Anna Bolena in Lisbon
Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, composed in 1830, didn’t make it to Lisbon until 1843 when there were 14 performances at its magnificent Teatro S„o Carlos (opened 1793), and there were 17 more performances spread over the next two decades. The entire twentieth century saw but three (3) performances in this European capital.
Billy Budd in Madrid
Like Carmen, Billy Budd is an operatic personage of such breadth and depth that he becomes unique to everyone. This signals that there is no Billy Budd (or Carmen) who will satisfy everyone. And like Carmen, Billy Budd may be indestructible because the opera will always mean something to someone.
Jeanne d’Arc au b˚cher in Lyon
There is no bigger or more prestigious name in avant-garde French theater than Romeo Castellucci (b. 1960), the Italian metteur en scËne of this revival of Arthur Honegger’s mystËre lyrique, Joan of Arc at the Stake (1938) at the OpÈra Nouvel in Lyon.
Giasone in Geneva
Fecund Jason, father of his wife Isifile’s twins and as well father of his seductress Medea’s twins, does indeed have a problem — he prefers to sleep with and wed Medea. In this resurrection of the most famous opera of the seventeenth century he evidently also sleeps with Hercules.
Falstaff in Genoa
A Falstaff that raised-the-bar ever higher, this was a posthumous resurrection of Luca Ronconi’s masterful staging of Verdi’s last opera, the third from last of the 83 operas Ronconi staged during his lifetime (1933-2015). And his third staging of Falstaff following Salzburg in 1993 and Florence in 2006.
Madama Butterfly in San Francisco
A Butterfly for the ages in a Butterfly marred by casting ineptness and lugubrious conducting.
Aida in San Francisco
An exquisite pit, a Busby Berkeley stage, ingenue performers. Populist opera in San Francisco — in November eleven performances of Aida (alternating with ten of Madama Butterfly).
V?c Makropulos in San Francisco
A fixation on death at San Francisco Opera. A 337 year-old woman gave it all up just now after only six years since she last gave it all up on the War Memorial stage.