Royal Opera
alexandra.coghlan
Anyone hoping to take refuge from last night’s football fever in the solemn halls of the Royal Opera House would have scored something of an own goal. Heading the bill for OperaShots – a trio of new operas staged in the intimate Linbury Theatre – was Jocelyn Pook’s Ingerland, an operatic meditation on the beautiful game. Framed by shorter works from Orlando Gough and Nitin Sawhney, the evening was a chance for three established composers to have a “shot” at opera for the first time. With Gough promising not so much an attempt as a “shot across the bow of opera”, we prepared ourselves for Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Thus I approached What Makes a Great Tenor? in a spirit of moderate scepticism. Had appearing on Popstar to Operastar destroyed at a stroke the credibility of its presenter, the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón? In a bid for the dreaded "accessibility", were they about to propose Paul Potts, the Carphone Warehouse Pavarotti, as the answer to the titular inquiry? Happily neither. In fact the programme struck an almost perfect balance between erudition, entertainment and a genuine fascination with the historical lore and legend of the opera house.As a presenter, Villazón radiates a hyperactive Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The opening night of Le nozze di Figaro was not so much an opera of two halves as an opera of two teams. In the pit we had Sir Colin Davis and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House offering a crisply incisive rendering of Mozart’s score; onstage we had the Royal Opera Chorus and a selection of soloists, most of whom seemed set on a rather different – and, in the case of the chorus, downright lacklustre – rendition of the score. Now on its second revival, David McVicar’s all-the-hallmarks-of-a-classic production should have the comfortable swagger of a sophomore, but it was the first-night Read more ...
David Nice
The backlash begins here with the first of Flavia Rittner's three documentaries: not an operatic wannabe or a gushing celebrity outsider to present, only a conductor who knows and loves his job inside out and a parade of gorgeous, energetic singers all at the very top of their hard-working game in state-of-the-art productions.It was a tall order for irresistible Royal Opera music director Antonio Pappano to whizz his way through Monteverdi, Handel, Mozart and Rossini in one hour, but by going straight to the heart of each matter, choosing a scene from a key opera and working on it in the most Read more ...
theartsdesk
Click on a picture for full view and to enter slideshowDessay (Marie) and Corbelli (Sulpice)Dessay (Marie) and Florez (Tonio)Florez (Tonio)Dessay (Marie) and the Vingt-et-unièmeDessay (Marie) and the Vingt-et-unièmeDessay (Marie), Dawn French (Duchesse de Crackentorp)Dessay (Marie) and Florez (Tonio)[bg|/OPERA/ismene_brown/fille_du_regiment]La Fille du régiment is at the Royal Opera House on Thursday, 25, 27, 29 May, 1 & 3 June (Colin Lee replaces Florez on 27 May, 1 & 3 June)This production and cast can be found on DVDCheck out what's on at the Royal Opera this seasonCheck out what's Read more ...
Ismene Brown
You can take the girl out of the barracks but you can’t take the barracks out of the girl would be one way to sum up Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment (Daughter of the Regiment), which I can’t conceive could have a more ribtickling production, more brilliantly sung, than the delight that opened last night at Covent Garden. Kill, as they say, to get a ticket. It has Natalie Dessay, Juan Diego Flórez, Ann Murray and Dawn French, and in a starring supporting role comes one of the wittiest set of translating surtitles I’ve ever come across. “It’s raining soldiers,” complains the butler as the Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Yesterday afternoon, Semyon Bychkov's recording of Lohengrin won BBC Music Magazine's prestigious disc of the year. Last year, The Sunday Telegraph named his recording of Eugene Onegin one of the top 10 opera recordings of all time. Proof - if proof were needed - that the Russian conductor is one of the living greats of the operatic pit. His upcoming Tannhäuser next season at Covent Garden is awaited with bated breath. His concert performances with the WDR Symphony Orchestra, Cologne, which he has headed up as chief conductor for the past 12 years, have not gone unnoticed either. None of it Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Filmed extracts of a fantastically vivid 1954 production of Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen have been unearthed by the great blogger Doundou Tchil of Classical Iconoclast. Václav Neumann is the conductor; Berlin's Komische Oper is the house. Whets the appetite for tonight's Bill Bryden revival production at Covent Garden. Hard to imagine the sets or the acting (watch that singing vixen scrambling about before the poacher) being bettered. My friend says I'm setting myself up for a fall. But Sir Charles Mackerras will no doubt give Neumann a run for his money.
Book for The Cunning Little Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Graham Vick's Tamerlano is less of an opera and more of a warning. In four and half hours you see 26 ways of how not to handle the Baroque aria. Dramatic success in Handel and his psychological flights of mainly soliloquising fancy is never easy but last night's ill-fated Royal Opera House production (Placido Domingo called in sick a few weeks back) was a lesson in abject theatrical failure. Or actually 26 lessons (there are around 27 arias in all). First up in the Graham Vick how-not-to-illustrate-an-aria class: clog-dancing. Particularly not to be used as an opener, particularly not Read more ...
theartsdesk
The Royal Opera House announced today that Plácido Domingo is withdrawing from next month's production of Tamerlano at Covent Garden. Domingo, who turned 69 in January, was due to sing the role of Bajazet in Handel's opera over seven performances between 5 and 20 March. But he has been suffering from lower abdominal pain while performing in Tokyo, and has returned to New York for preventive surgery. The hope is that he will be back performing in six weeks. The American tenor Kurt Streit, who was already going to sing the role of Bajazet on 13 and 17 March, is now taking over the entire run. Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Two very different lessons on love this week. From the Aphrodite-like Joyce DiDonato at the Wigmore Hall, there emerged a correct, wise, honest way to achieve an enamoured state; from the familiarly fickle cast of Così fan tutte - an almost unwatchably faulty bunch of emotional primitives in Jonathan Miller's production for the Royal Opera - very much the wrong way.Miller is absolutely right to press home the point about the unattractiveness of Così fan tutte's group of solipsists. A mirror is the star of the show as a result. No one can escape it. Fiordiligi (Sally Matthews) falls for Read more ...
james.woodall
Antonio Pappano (b. 1959) enjoys the best of two opulent worlds. At the Royal Opera House in London (now his home city), he's well stuck in to his seventh season as music director, basking in popularity and plaudits previous incumbents could only have dreamt of. In Rome, he's director of the Orchestra of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, a post he took up in 2005. The orchestra, over 100 years old - the Accademia itself goes back to the 1580s - is based at an extraordinary Renzo Piano-designed structure, called the Auditorium Parco della Musica, a couple of kilometres north of the Read more ...