Tabla de contenidos para September 2021 en Opera Now

The world of ‘cancel culture’ poses particular problems for opera. A growing band of extreme revisionists would ban Mozart’s Così fan tutte from ever being performed on account of its indelible sexism – such a thing has been proposed! I recently attended a production meeting in which the director of a new production of Tosca seriously considered having the opera conclude at the end of Act II with Scarpia’s castration and the heroine running off triumphant into the Roman hills, her lover trailing behind in abject gratitude. (Fortunately, the idea failed to get past the company’s artistic director). It’s refreshing then, to have the Australian director Lindy Hume (who finds herself labelled a ‘feminist opera director’) give a more considered account of how she will be handling the challenges of…

World Opera Day As the world emerges from the pandemic, the annual celebrations on 25 October take on a new significance, celebrating a young generation of opera singers whose careers have been on hold. Gothenburg Opera’s Ring Cycle Director Stephen Langridge discusses the culmination of a project that has managed to keep up its momentum and captivate audiences in the theatre and on screen through all the challenges of lockdown Opera and the environment With the world on the brink of a major environmental disaster, how is opera playing its part in the climate change crisis All points north From the splendour of the Royal Opera in Sweden to great outdoor festivals and quirky operas in deep forests, we discover an atmospheric new season of opera in the Nordic regions…

Ella Taylor, a British soprano who is trans/non-binary, hopes that mixing things up a bit in a fun way will lead to the development of more fleshed-out characters. ‘I don’t need a character to be gender neutral, I just want people to think about the whole story arc rather than “she’s a woman, she’s a bit sad, put her in a dress”. In Longborough’s recent production of Così fan tutte, I saw pictures of Fiordiligi dressed in armour plate and helmet and I thought; yes that’s cool.’ However, Taylor admits that despite opera promoting gender differences on stage that’s not always the case off-stage. ‘It hasn’t helped me, but then why should it? Opera is about suspending disbelief anyway so what’s a bit more on top of that? I knew…

Since 2016 Buxton Opera House’s CEO has been Paul Kerryson, formerly of the Leicester Curve, where (as in Buxton) his many successes reflect his love of and considerable expertise in musicals. Sondheim’s A Little Night Music was a co-production between the Festival and the Buxton Opera House. If musicals are set to become a regular part of the Buxton mix, Kerryson looks likely to become a frequent partner: in 2022 he will direct Jule Styne’s Gypsy. In itself Sondheim’s closest approach (and indeed a homage) to operetta, A Little Night Music is not far off the 50th anniversary of its Broadway opening back in 1973. Unlike in the simultaneous Opera North/Leeds Playhouse co-production (which opened just a week earlier), in Buxton there was no deviation from the original period of…

Over the summer months, Glyndebourne was back to something approaching fullscale activity. The festival offered five operas, including two revivals: Nicholas Hytner’s traditional and popular 2006 Così fan tutte returned, as did Tristan und Isolde – for pandemic reasons presented as a concert staging, with 70 London Philharmonic musicians on the platform under music director Robin Ticciati. Its staged elements derived from Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s much admired 2003 production, on which this year’s director, Daniel Dooner, had previously assisted. Ticciati was in musical charge, too, of the festival’s opening production, Janáček’s Kát’a Kabanová, once again with the LPO in the pit (as it was for all three new shows). But as in all other houses, the inevitable Covid restrictions – rigorously observed, as required, at this well-run address – caused certain…

Bampton Opera The Deanery Garden, Bampton, Oxfordshire MUSIC STAGING Since 1993 Bampton Classical Opera has charted a particular furrow – the rarer operas of the classical period and its immediate surround composed by the likes of Arne, Cimarosa, Grétry, Martín y Soler, Paer, Paisiello, Salieri and Storace, as well as Mozart, Handel, Haydn and Gluck. The company’s latest venture, Gluck’s Paris and Helen (aka Paride ed Elena) proved extremely worthwhile. Written in Italian for the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1770, the dramma per musica was designed for four sopranos voices in the principal roles. Both musically and dramatically it’s a fascinating piece, and its total neglect by major UK companies is inexplicable. Stepping into the gap, as on so many other occasions, Bampton places us all in its debt. Gilly…

I puritani Bellini Delos DE3537 Fidelio Beethoven Pentatone PTC 5186 880 Satyagraha Philip Glass OMM/The Metropolitan Opera OMM5010 Simon Boccanegra Verdi Accentus Music ACC20510 Elektra Strauss Unitel 804308 Love Duets Sonya Yoncheva & Vittorio Grigolo CMajor 757808 CDs/Downloads Bellini’s last opera, I Puritani, gets an excellent outing in a new recording. The only point in reviving the opera is for outstanding vocalists, which we have here. Sarah Coburn leads the cast as Elvira, and her voice suits the role perfectly. She has a sweet tone, with enough vibrato to avoid being saccharine, and the technical challenges don’t seem to faze her in the slightest. Her colororatura is perfect, her phrasing immaculate, and she is not shy of an interpolated high note – and what excitingly solid ones they are! She…

OperaVision is an online site which streams performances of opera, dance and performing arts-related events from major theatres around the world, both live and on demand. The site brings together 29 partners, including opera companies and festivals, from 17 countries, streaming new and classic performances, subtitled and on demand. It also offers an extensive digital library that includes synopses, background material and articles. There are also resources for opera professionals and for young audiences. Supported by the European Union's Creative Europe programme, OperaVision has grown out of The Opera Platform, featuring more contributing opera companies from more countries under the curatorship Opera Europa, the European association of opera companies and festivals. Available to view in English, French, and German, the site is free for visitors to browse and explore. COMING…

Favourite time of day? I’m a definitely a night person, I’m a bit slow in the mornings. Favourite colour? I always say yellow, which couples in with my favourite season spring, the forsythia in my garden and the colour of our front door. I love that colour of old gold and it’s not because I’ve spent half my life singing Wagner’s Ring. It’s also to do with optimism. I’ve always been a hay fever sufferer in June. I enjoy springtime before the hayfever hits me. My voice isn’t affected, thank God. Favourite artist? Rembrandt’s self-portraits; and Pavarotti. Favourite building? I studied civil engineering at Manchester University – I’ll say the original Forth Bridge in Scotland, built in 1890. It’s one of the first ever steel structures and still the longest…

No-fly zone Given the horrendous news that greets us with daily about the environmental disaster the world is facing, it was good to read Irina Brook’s thoughtful piece about how opera houses can recycle materials from old productions in order to save on costs and reduce waste that would otherwise be added to the global pile (Opera Now July/August 2021, page 9). I was bemused to read in her article, however, that she would, I quote, ‘like to be invited to opera houses around the world to do my organic operas, using their existing stock.’ Surely this defeats the object of her good work? Flying around the world is possibly the worst thing an individual can do to harm the environment – ‘offsetting’ your carbon footprint through financial contributions just…

Russia has a long tradition of mingling art with propaganda. I remember as a teenager being enthralled by the films of Sergei Eisenstein, an extraordinary pioneering Russian genius admired by Stalin who invested heavily in his Ivan the Terrible trilogy, seeing himself as a modern equivalent of that ferocious tsar. But, as Eisenstein’s project developed, it grew controversial. Part three was never shown and – apart from a few odd scenes – entirely destroyed. Such adolescent memories came in handy when Grange Park Opera at West Horsley sprang back to life (after 2020’s Covid silence). This summer’s programme was half devoted to poignant and popular romantic entertainment in the form of Puccini’s Bohème and Verdi’s Falstaff. But the more original half involved Russian tyrants, thanks to the banker-composer Anthony Bolton’s…

Billed as Beginnings: New and Early Opera, The Guildhall presented a sequence of five staged works (including an oratorio and a cantata) in one evening for its end-ofacademic-year opera performance. It was an exquisite mix of the old and new, with variety aplenty. Although broadcast online for free, there was a healthy (but socially distanced) audience present. The three new operas are fruits of the Guildhall’s MA in Opera Making and Writing. The first opera, The Apothecary, was by Amy Crankshaw, with Clare Best as librettist. Set in Paris in 1785, a stage containing various bottles on cabinets spoke of the apothecary. But… a spaceman wondered aimlessly around. Enigma was at the heart of this experience, the evening beautifully created by director John Ramster, designer Louis Carver, lighting designer Jake…

Opera is experiencing a lightbulb moment in its history: it is both thrilling and a little amusing that misogyny is suddenly the discussion that everyone wants to have. The fact that opera’s bias against women is finally on the table for broad debate in 2021 is cause for celebration, even if the opera world has been dragged kicking and screaming to that table. We are finally having this conversation in response, of course, to the sharper social focus on these issues, and because of community concern about how public money is spent; but also because opera houses are sensitive to economic impacts in an era of shifting public opinion and growing awareness of opera’s gender bias and the inherent misogyny and racism in many of its most famous works. If…

The Royal Opera House in London has announced that it is relaunching its international cinema relays, following 16 months of closure during the pandemic. The ROH’s cinema season will feature new productions and classics from the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet, co-inciding with the the launch of its 2021/22 season – the first full ROH programme for two years. The screenings will be broadcast to audiences in around 2,000 cinemas across the UK and in more than 35 countries worldwide. The last year has been devastating for both international cinema and the global arts industry. Overnight, the Royal Opera House lost £3 out of every £5 of its income and, in order to survive the impact of the pandemic, put in place an emergency plan to ensure financial recovery…

Whereas other opera festivals in Britain this summer were emphasising the challenges of performing in a time of Covid, with semistaged productions and austerity budgets much in evidence, Garsington Opera did the Right Thing by audiences starved of live opera. The festival opener looked so sumptuous and sounded so ravishing that, for a few hours, you could almost forget that times are tough and we are still in a pandemic. Der Rosenkavalier was the perfect choice for this festival season in particular: Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s fin-de-siècle confection is, after all, about a tipping point in time, pivoting between the Marchellin’s nostalgia for her lost youth and the promise of a better future for her young proteges – their souls free to soar, finally, from all strictures of the past. Gary…

The Grange Festival Northington Grange, Hampshire MUSIC STAGING Whether or not they haunt the bottom of your garden, a belief in fairies sometimes matters; and never more than in Britten’s operatic adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s always a tricky piece to bring off. When it works it’s a delight, but it can also be a car-crash. Among its looming problems are those fairies. If their rank and file are sung by trebles (as Britten planned) they don’t carry well against the orchestra in any fair-sized space. Never forget the Dream was written for a sort of church hall on a Suffolk seafront, with the audience in almost touching distance. Fairies these days call for special pleading, and stage directors need to follow the example of Peter Pan…

Longborough’s Die Walküre, postponed from last year, required its singers to work around an orchestra of masked string players on stage while the brass and percussion and everyone else roared away – unmasked – in the pit. Despite these pandemic constrictions, Lee Bisset as Brünnhilde absolutely shone. From her opening feral ‘Hojotohos’, this glorious voice conveyed youthful excitement within the confines of complete musical control. By her own estimation, Lee’s Brünnhilde is a 19-year-old giving emotional support to an obviously failing father. Paul Carey Jones as that Wotan was clearly finding the stresses of being Warfather overwhelming, repeatedly collapsing as he tried to juggle the impossible and contradictory demands he had piled on himself. This Wotan was sung with a rich, dark sonority that belied his mental anguish. The two…

What with one thing and another, I found myself at my first open-air opera in a while at the Roman theatre in St Albans, watching Charles Court Opera resuming a somewhat interrupted tour of Iolanthe on a blazing day at the start of the summer. I suppose Iolanthe isn’t as riotous as Pirates or Pinafore but it has plenty of subtle and not so subtle pleasures, plus obvious opportunities for fun at the expense of parliament, the constitution and voters – things about which the satire always seems pretty fresh, and ripe for development as politics becomes ever more freaky. It would take an exceptionally self-denying director to eschew the comic possibilities of the B word, of course, and luckily John Savournin is not that, though he knows his audience…

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