Carmen at the Grange Opera
Plus ça change …? The Grange Park Opera Festival has moved premises. At The Grange, near Alresford in Hampshire, a new entity has arrived, called confusingly the Grange Opera Festival. Some alterations to the auditorium and its surrounds have taken…
Salome in Amsterdam
Until yesterday evening I had not experienced a wholly satisfying performance of Salome. The problem is, I think, that directors and designers have tended to take too literal an approach to the setting of the opera: Herod portrayed as a…
A Weinberg Korngold Double Bill in Heidelberg
The idea of the Heidelberg Theatre to bring together in a double bill two short operas by Mieczyslaw Weinberg (Mazel Tov) and Erich Korngold (Der Ring des Polykrates) seemed to be a good one. Both were written by Jewish composers…
Schnittke’s Life with an Idiot in Giessen
First performed in 1992, Schnittke’s opera Life with an Idiot initially achieved some notoriety and success across Europe but recently seems to have fallen out of favour. That is a pity because unquestionably it is a masterpiece. It is remarkable…
José Cura’s Peter Grimes in Bonn
Suppose that you were the artistic director of a medium-sized German opera company. A very famous Argentinian tenor, in the autumn of his career, has wanted for some years to sing the title role in Peter Grimes, and says…
Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète in Essen
It sometimes happens that you leave an opera house with a sense of irritation gnawing away at you. This occurred last night at Essen after a performance of Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète. No, it was not the staging, though in many…
Der Freischütz in Münster
Considering the importance of Der Freischütz in the history of opera, and of romantic art generally, it has received surpisingly few performances outside Germany in recent times. This is probably because, notwithstanding a remarkable score, juxtaposing fluent melodies with striking…
World Première of Francesconi’s Trompe-la-Mort in Paris
A major event of the 2016-17 season in Paris has been the world première of Luca Francesconi’s Trompe-la-Mort. While any attempt to recreate in operatic terms a single volume of Balzac’s monumental Comédie Humaine might have been far too ambitious,…
La Rondine in Graz
La Rondine is the least often performed of Puccini’s mature operas. This may be because of its lightness – almost in parts of an operetta character; or because, with its Traviata-like Third Act, it is not perceived to have a…
Vivaldi’s Arsilda in Bratislava
The première in Bratislava of the first staging in modern times of Vivaldi’s seventh work for theatre, Arsilda, Regina di Ponto, was momentous. The score by itself justifies the piece’s resuscitation. Although it has the conventional features of baroque opera,…
La Cenerentola in Leeds
La Cenerentola is without doubt my favourite Rossini opera. It may not have the brilliant arias of the Barber but its perky ensembles are unrivalled. The score requires plenty of zing, but also poise, humour and, at points, tenderness. Wyn…
Prince Igor in Amsterdam
Borodin’s Prince Igor is a ramshackle affair, a series of episodes – personal and political – loosely strung together with some fine music. It needs a strong directorial hand and in Dmitry Tcherniakov, restaging for the Dutch National Opera in…
Opera della Luna’s Offenbach Double Bill
Jacques Offenbach wrote nearly 100 operettas, many of which have not been staged in recent years. So it was enterprising of Opera della Luna to present a double bill of Croquefer and The Isle of Tulipatan. This was my third…
Minghella’s Butterfly in Vilnius
You have travelled 1300 miles to see opera in Vilnius and you find a production that you could have seen in London. Admittedly it is Anthony Minghella’s renowned staging of Madam Butterfly and a decade or so after its original…
Lucia di Lammermoor in Kaunas
I was in Lithuania for my first visit to Kaunas, the country’s second city. The local theatre, which is best known for operetta and musicals, had on offer a bel canto tragedy, Lucia di Lammermoor. How would it fare? The…
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Snow Maiden in Leeds
The operas by Rimsky-Korsakov are not as often performed as they deserve. Perhaps his mixture of fairy tale, exoticism and Russianism, and the absence of “big tunes”, are thought not to appeal to a wide audience. But my experience in…
My Operatic Highlights 2016
DIRECTORS Johannes von Matuschka: Der Traumgörge, Hanover Christophe Honoré: Cosi Fan Tutte, Edinburgh (Aix) DESIGNERS Daniel Dvořák: Three Wishes, Ostrava Tiziano Santi: Semiramide, Florence CONDUCTORS Patrik Ringborg: Die tote Stadt, Kassel Alain Altinoglu: Le Coq d’Or, Brussels SINGERS Rachel Harnisch:…
Orphée aux Enfers in Liège
What are the enduring qualities of Offenbach’s Orphée aux Enfers which enables it to be performed so successfully in the 21st century? First, there are familiar mythological characters given an unfamiliar slant, beginning with Orpheus and Eurydice detesting each other….
Rimsky-Korsakov’s Golden Cockerel at La Monnaie
I had not appreciated until last night’s performance by the Brussels Opera, how subversive a piece is Rimsky-Korsakov’s Golden Cockerel, looking forward to Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita and even Ionesco. And Laurent Pelly’s superb production caught exactly the right balance…
Offenbach’s La Vie Parisienne at Manchester RNCM
Offenbach’s La Vie Parisienne is a good choice for a student production with its many solo parts and scenes for chorus, and its witty, racy content. And – no surprise – the RNCM did it proud. This was the Opera…