Tabla de contenidos para October 2021 en Opera Now

Can opera tread more lightly when it comes the impact it has on the environment? In the past, the art form has been celebrated for its extravagance: star singers flying from continent to continent to perform in vast heated/airconditioned theatres, among elaborate sets, with powerful ranks of lighting both in the auditorium and on stage, and to audiences who also travel far and wide to indulge their operatic pleasures. It all sounds incredibly resource intensive – as indeed it is. As we all now are aware, the world is facing an environmental crisis and all of us have a part to play in making sure that the creative industries can be sustained and will continue to thrive in the decades ahead. This issue of Opera Now touches upon the many…

The Polish soprano Teresa Żylis-Gara, who died in August at age 91, enjoyed a lengthy operatic career, specialising in roles such as Donna Elvira, Desdemona, Octavian, Elsa, Manon Lescaut, and many others. Yet had she followed the advice of an early mentor, she might have had no career in opera at all. Defining herself as a liricospinto or ‘youthful dramatic’ (jugendlicher dramatisch) soprano, Żylis-Gara was born in what is now Lentvaris, Lithuania. For nine years she studied at the Łódź Music Academy with Olga Olgina, an accomplished coloratura. Possessing rather more vocal agility that her pupil would ever offer, Olgina recorded Rossini with the conductor Basil Cameron for Decca during a 1930s concert tour of the UK. Olgina, whose pupils also included the soprano Teresa Kubiak, assured Żylis-Gara that her…

Shortly after the recent premiere of Houses Slide in London, a new opera-cum-oratorio addressing the climate crisis, the Met Office issued its first ever extreme heat warning as large areas of the UK experienced a prolonged heatwave – followed by flash floods. In other parts of the world, wildfires rampage and rivers rise. According to NASA, 2020 was the hottest year on record, a period marked by devastating weather-driven global disasters that can be directly linked to climate change. It’s a situation that provokes a broad range of responses, from denial to despair. These are represented in Houses Slide, which uses real-life testimonials gathered by librettist Cordelia Lynn with support from climate anxiety psychotherapist Ro Randall. Collective responsibility is anchored by the experience of a nameless individual – sung by…

‘Opera For All’ has been Copenhagen Opera Festival’s mantra since its first outing in 2009. Its current artistic director, former Covent Garden staff director Amy Lane, clung to that guiding principle for her first edition of the event in August 2020, hastily re-organising a festival which circumvented the various Covid restrictions by presenting ‘100 Moments of Opera’ in as many different locations throughout the Danish capital. Citizens were invited to request a performance in their own garden or apartment block. The 2021 festival this summer returned to business as usual: a variegated combination of popular (and free) outdoor events, bijoux concerts, experimental work, unusual presentations of standard fare and daily participatory sing-alongs – all assiduously avoiding buildings you’d usually associate with opera. Those singalongs (a Danish social tradition) took place…

Stringent Covid measures compelled the Bayreuth Festival to allow only 900 fully tested or vaccinated spectators for each performance of its new production of Die Fliegende Holländer (usual seating capacity: 1,937). The sense of vacuum created by the empty seats was compounded by yet another absence: the chorus sang from a nearby rehearsal room, with lip-synched sailors and their sweethearts bravely miming on stage. In spite of the superb quality of the sound transmission, the overall effect was unconvincing: as in the Greek tragedies, choruses in Wagner operas must not only project powerful singing lines, but also perform a vital dramatic role, which in the case of the Dutchman includes stamping and dancing. Synchronisation between socially distanced chorus and orchestra posed a unique challenge for Oksana Lyniv, the first female…

In the vast open area of the Circo Massimo, in the balmy coolness at the end of a scorching Roman day, Daniele Gatti completed the Verdi trilogy he began here last year with Rigoletto and La Traviata. The traffic in the background fell away, the occasional thinness of the amplified orchestra didn’t matter. Even when social distancing meant that Azucena’s fetters were two long white strips tying her to the sides of the stage, you were completely carried along. Director Lorenzo Mariani’s dark production for Rome Opera drew its inspiration from Ingmar Bergmann’s Seventh Seal, with an atemporal drama that unfolded entirely by night. William Orlandi’s simple but effective settings and costumes gave us a forward-sloping stage backed by a huge screen on which flames and stormy skies changed swiftly…

1 What do the 1967 hit singles ‘Release Me’ and ‘The Last Waltz’ have in common with Hänsel und Gretel? (Clue: it’s not their Spanish eyes.) 2 How many Flowermaidens are there in Wagner’s Parsifal? 3 In operatic terms, what does ‘antefatto’ mean? 4 Pushkin wrote the play The Stone Guest after seeing a performance of which Mozart opera? 5 Which opera composer in turn set Pushkin’s play The Stone Guest almost verbatim? 6 Name the critic whose classic guide The Complete Opera Book was published posthumously in 1919. (When revised by Lord Harwood in 1954, the title included the author’s name.) 7 What does Verdi’s Alzira,(1845) have in common with Paddington Bear? 8 Who was the first woman to conduct at the Royal Opera House? 9 What titles are…

Battle of the sexes Reading Lindy Hume’s piece in your last issue was like being struck by a thunderbolt. So, Pinkerton and Don José aren’t role models, after all! So that’s where we’ve been going wrong all these years! It’s hard to know where to start bushwhacking one’s way through the thicket of buzzwords: ‘misogyny’, ‘bias against women’, ‘gender bias’, ‘inherent racism’ – but of course it’s hardly necessary: very few sane people will recognise the sex-war battlefield she describes. Amusing too that she believes it is she who deserves the credit for discovering that Carmen is a free spirit. If she really believes that Bizet, Verdi and Puccini invented these women simply in order to torture them to death, maybe she is in the wrong business. The truth is…

The Grange Festival in Hampshire has teamed up with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to create a series of works by young people that explore themes of conservation and other issues affecting planet earth. Learning@TheGrange, in collaboration with WWF, has recruited 250 young people aged 7 to 23 to express their hopes for a sustainable future. Through interactive workshops guided by creative professionals, groups from nine schools and educational institutions discussed different global landscapes, from the Amazon Rainforest to ancient woodlands in the UK. The participants wrote text, composed music and choreographed dance to represent how they want life to be on our living planet. Their songs were filmed and illustrated with footage from Silverback Films, and a collection of these, entitled Future Visions, was launched on 29 September at…

Back in business after more than 600 dark days, Opera Holland Park’s theatre was significantly de-pimped to stay ahead of government edicts. Out with the bleachers and the side-panels of the big tent, in with 400 ad hoc chairs, a sloping gangway around the orchestra pit, with a throughdraught allowing a festive doffing of masks, this summer’s equivalent of the French Revolution. A great job, and James Clutton and his gang ran the usual joyous, come-one-come-all party. And the summer kicked off correctly with The Marriage of Figaro. Those Almavivas sure ran a turbulent household, servants and random hangers-on treating it very much as their own gaff, the bosses peripheral to the whole operation. This was emphasised by physical distance here, the plotting in the Countess’s room taking place way…

This gala was a triumph for all concerned: not just the outstanding star cast, but also for the Orchestra of the GNO which, under its conductor, Philippe Auguin, provided expert accompaniment and created creating an authentic Verdian sound, brimming with the requisite Italianità so essential to this composer. The amazing production team ensured that we got excellent sound in the vast Panathenaic Stadium, but everything was also visually superb, with subtly coloured lighting, sometimes dramatically attuned to the spirit of the music. The whole event was elegant and refined – miraculously bereft of any vestige of the usual ‘circus’ atmosphere that such grand conceptions tend to inspire. The programme included some of the most popular arias, duets and trios from Macbeth, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, Aida, Otello and, as an encore,…

At short notice (three days), the Salzburg Festival cancelled the TV broadcast of this year’s Tosca. Due to administrative problems, it was announced. Then the local press reported that Anna Netrebko, unhappy with the filming of the first performance, had made use of her legal rights to prevent the transmission. Those of us who saw her live at the Grosses Festspielhaus understood her decision. Not only was she unable to warm up to Michael Sturminger’s production, staged as a mafia affair in modern Rome, but also her singing was uneven. For instance, at the start of ‘Vissi d’arte’, where too many chest notes were overgrown in volume and there was, occasionally, imprecise diction in the low register. Later on in the aria, her timbre overwhelmed us all with its usual…

Joan Sutherland – in performance 1957-1960 Cameo Classics WOAD – a fashion opera Alastair White Métier MSV 28609 La princesse jaune Saint-Saëns Bru Zane BZ1045 La bohème Puccini Opus Arte OA1332D Faust Gounod Opus Arte OA1330D Mireille Gounod Naxos 2.110683-84 CD and Download Some of you will know the Joan Sutherland performances in the latest collection from Cameo Classics from previous releases. But these are specifically taken from the private archive of the late Richard Itter, who recorded performances off-air for more than 40 years, starting in 1952. The collection is slowly being transferred to disc – seemingly a never-ending task. The first disc mainly comprises of Donizetti’s rarity, Emilia di Liverpool (you have to work on the assumption that, to 19thcentury Italians, Liverpool was a place of exotic high…

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Like many leading singers around the world, Michael Fabiano is finding himself busy again as opera houses look beyond the pandemic to restore their live programming in the season ahead. We chatted on Zoom recently, just as he was about to head to France to sing Cavaradossi in Paris Opera’s Tosca. Needless to say, he was elated at the prospect of being in front of a real audience after such a long absence during Covid. Fabiano compares the thrill of singing live in a theatre with the excitement of being in a sporting arena. He was a professional baseball umpire for 12 years, alongside his opera career, travelling all over the US and the world. ‘I always make an equation between baseball and singing, in the sense that you have…

How many vocalists are so transcendent that it is worth hearing every scrap that they recorded? Ponselle, Björling, and a few others. This new set of the African-American contralto Marian Anderson’s complete RCA Victor recordings proves that she was definitely among them. Ranging from 1924, when Anderson was 27, to 1966, by which time she really should have stopped recording, the 15 CDs that feature in Sony’s newly released Marian Anderson – Beyond the Music demonstrate that Arturo Toscanini was a master of understatement when he informed Anderson after a 1935 Salzburg recital: ‘What I heard today one is privileged to hear only once in 100 years.’ Perhaps ‘once every 500 years’ wouldn’t be hyperbolic. How the solid vocal texture, like a rich variety of wood rather than mere sound…

As with every other festival, this year Nevill Holt had to explore what the possibilities might be for a 2021 summer season. Put into practice, the eventual result of its deliberations proved to be among the most creative approaches adopted. Firstly, the Leicestershire-based event was moved from June to August (fewer social distancing restrictions); then, with the company’s small but perfectly formed opera house effectively off limits, it brought a temporary theatre to the site to present performances al fresco. Almost invisible to the audience, the orchestras for each show were located at the back of the structure, with the chorus and principals either acting on the stage itself or on a specially created grassy crossing at the front. One of the advantages of the new setup was that it…

— OPERA — GIOACHINO ROSSINI LA CENERENTOLA Riccardo Frizza · Stefan Herheim GEORG FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL PARTENOPE Ivor Bolton · Christopher Alden PREMIERE AT THE TEATRO REAL GIACOMO PUCCINI LA BOHÈME Nicola Luisotti / Luis Miguel Méndez · Richard Jones RICHARD WAGNER GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG Pablo Heras-Casado · Robert Carsen LUIS D E PABLO EL ABRECARTAS Fabián Panisello · Xavier Albertí WORLD PREMIERE SERGÉI PROKÓFIEV OGNENNÏY ANGEL Gustavo Gimeno · Calixto Bieito PREMIERE AT THE TEATRO REAL WOLFGANG A. MOZART LE NOZZE DI FIGARO Ivor Bolton · Lotte de Beer ARTHUR HONEGGER JEANNE D’ARC AU BÛCHER Juanjo Mena · La Fura dels Baus PREMIERE AT THE TEATRO REAL GIUSEPPE VERDI NABUCCO Nicola Luisotti / Jordi Bernacer · Andreas Homoki RICARDO LLORCA LAS HORAS VACÍAS Alexis Soriano · José Luis Arellano García PREMIERE AT…

In founding the Tiroler Festspiele in 1997, Gustav Kuhn has succeeded in making Erl, a small town on the German-Austrian border near Kufstein, a meeting point for lovers of music from all over the world. Erl has become even more attractive because of its modern festival theatre with its futuristic design, whose eccentric dynamic geometry was developed in harmony with the landscape. It was built in 2012 and boasts breathtakingly good acoustics. This year’s festival felt normal: full auditorium, no masks, long intervals with opulent gastronomy, a big orchestra and an even bigger chorus – children’s chorus included! But the enjoyment of this normality was dogged by an uneasy feeling: had the pandemic just been a terrible nightmare? Hänsel und Gretel is well known to all opera lovers. But surely…

Platée Rameau Unitel 804708 Dancing alone, really throwing some shapes but looking foolish, eager to join in but sadly oblivious to others’ mirth, perhaps a little over-refreshed at the end of a night out…no, I don’t mean Michael Gove but Platée, Rameau’s unfortunate nymph. But plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, and perhaps Mr Gove should watch this production, although one fears it is perhaps a little too late. It is a spiteful tale, based on an ancient Greek myth as told by Pausanius, in which Jupiter convinces an ugly nymph, Platée, into thinking she’s been plucked from her marsh for some very special one-on-one attention. She falls for it hook, line and sinker. Alas, it’s all a ploy to reassure his jealous wife, Juno, that she has…

Lucrezia Borgia Donizetti OA1237D The legendary Joan Sutherland tackles the title role at Covent Garden in 1980, with her usual attributes of a voice of considerable size, extension and pinpoint agility – her trills are astounding and her interpolated acuti are like laser beams. Her acting skills are somewhat generalised, but Sutherland provides a grand presence and dominates the stage. Alfredo Kraus, ever the tenor stylist, limns an elegant Gennaro albeit with acting to match his soprano. Between them they send the audience into a frenzy. Anne Howells is a vivid Orsini, Stafford Dean a gravelly Alfonso. Richard Bonynge conducts with great attention to his singers. John Copley’s lavish production is traditional to a T, with the extra fascination of watching 16th-century Italy through the lens of 1980s fashion –…

Favourite time of day? Early afternoon because after lunch there’s a certain stillness everywhere that I’ve always enjoyed, and I sometimes have a siesta. Our house is in the middle of London but it’s totally quiet. Favourite season? What I love are the times of year when things change. I suppose top favourite would be when the winter starts to come into spring and things that have been keeping themselves closed start to open, life is resumed. Favourite artist? For his delicacy and sensuality Perugino, Italian renaissance painter of the Umbrian school born in 1446; Ingres, his incredible definement and naturalism; and Manet, the earthy quality of his human beings and the life in his paintings – I find them thrilling to see time and time again. Favourite colour? I…