Tabla de contenidos para July 2022 en Opera Now

Summer 2022: how life has moved on from this time last year. Opera is thriving again, with the festival season in full swing. ‘Covid hesitancy’ is still with us – and not everyone can afford to take risks; but there seems to be new confidence about going out and experiencing the world at first-hand. Audiences, deprived of live performance for almost two years, are flocking to theatres, and although the legacy of streaming and home entertainment endures, most of the opera lovers I speak to say how relieved they are to be back in opera houses, engaging in lively interval chitchat with fellow members of the audience and enjoying real-life engagement with opera, that most visceral of art forms. One question that I am repeatedly asked is whether travelling abroad…

Throughout the summer, the Metropolitan Opera, New York will be presenting its Summer Encores of performances from its acclaimed Live in HD series in cinemas and theatres around the US and internationally. The 2022 Summer Encores series opens with Lehár’s The Merry Widow, starring sopranos Renée Fleming and Kelli O’Hara in director-choreographer Susan Stroman’s effervescent staging. The series also features Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, with soprano Patricia Racette in the title role in Anthony Minghella’s vivid production; Franco Zeffirelli’s classic staging of Puccini’s La bohème, with a cast led by soprano Sonya Yoncheva and tenor Michael Fabiano; and Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment featuring the vocal fireworks of soprano Natalie Dessay and tenor Juan Diego Flórez. www.metopera.org…

Richard Jones takes a harsher view of Samson et Dalila than the previous production at the Royal Opera House, which was all shimmering heat haze in its atmospheric settings by artist Sidney Nolan. Jones’ new staging gives us a hard environment in which the downtrodden Hebrews are oppressed by the mocking and violent Philistines. The settings are garish and brutal, unforgivingly lit. There is a set of steps for Samson’s first scene, and Dalila’s house consists of two walls on a revolve, enabling the action to flow with efficiency. Jones provides motive for Dalila’s ruthless nature when Abimelech is killed, and the Old Hebrew also bites the dust to add to Samson’s anguish when betrayed. The Bacchanale in Act III offers a giant fairground head, a brash blue, with a…

La Seine Musicale, the achingly cool concert hall on the Ile Seguin in Paris, was the setting for David Bobee’s staging of Fidelio. The hall is also the home of Insula Orchestra, presided over by Laurence Equilbey, offering proof positive that authentic instrument performance can carry a visceral punch. Equilbey’s reading of Beethoven’s opera is powerful and laserfocused, generally fast tempos underlining a sense of momentum, its sense of trajectory enhanced by lack of interval. The set of performances at the orchestra’s Parisian home followed a number of semi-stagings in Belgium and London. Elemental video projections (Wojtek Doroszuk) plus a supreme use of silhouette enhance rather than overpower the staging’s basic message of hope in the most strained of times. The staging certainly encompasses extremes, from the near-death state of…

The Czech composer Jaroslav Křička (1882-1969) excelled at miniatures: he was initially known for his children’s song cycles, the first Czech children’s opera, Ogaři (Lads, 1918) and children’s Singspiels. In 1936, he won the bronze medal in the Olympic Games art competition for his orchestral Horácko Suite, Op 63. The Lord in White is Křička’s third opera, completed when he was 47 and his first real attempt at a large-scale work for the stage. As he wrote in his journal in 1927, this opera ‘should answer the question whether my mission is [composing] small forms’. Its full title in Czech is Bílý pán, aneb Těžko se dnes duchům straší – ‘The Lord in White or No Haunts Left For Ghosts’ – a version of Oscar Wilde’s humorous short story The…

1 In Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Fiordiligi starts the opera in a relationship with which man? 2 In Verdi’s Requiem, which soloist makes their vocal entry last in the ‘Kyrie eleison’? 3 An island and a pig are both what? 4 Who created the role of Otello for Verdi at La Scala in 1887? 5 What do Leonora (Il trovatore) and Fedora (Fedora) both wear that comes in handy when the going gets tough? 6 Which opera contains the two spoken words ‘American kaput’? 7 Which opera depicts the Sängerkrieg that (debatably) took place in Thuringia in 1207? 8 You are awarded the title of Hovsångare in which country? 9 Callas wore rocks worth $1 million from which jeweller for her Paris Opéra debut in 1958? 10 What animal appears…

Spot the difference In the May 2022 issue of Opera Now, your correspondent Fiona Hook makes the mistake of equating the historic castrato alto with a contemporary countertenor alto (The Golden Age of the Countertenor, page 22). Not all male altos are the same. The castrato and countertenor voices depend on radically different means of vocal production. The countertenor, alto or soprano, uses only a portion of his vocal cords and stays primarily in his head voice. The castrati, on the other hand, developed strong vocal muscles, used all of their vocal cords, and cultivated their chest voices. As I argued in my article in Early Music America Magazine (EMAg, January 2021), the closest approximation of the castrato voice is not a countertenor but a female mezzo or contralto. Countertenor…

THE PREMIUM PACKAGE OPERA NOW PRINT & DIGITAL Our premium subscription option is a must-have for every opera enthusiast. Combining both our print and digital subscription packages into one, our premium package is the most comprehensive and cost-effective way to enjoy Opera Now. 12 print issues each year, delivered directly to your door 12 digital issues, available to read on your phone, tablet or digital devices Access to our 33-year digital archive, allowing you to explore every issue of From L9.53 every month INDIVIDUAL SUBSCRIPTION PACKAGES OPERA NOW PRINT 12 issues per year From L7.12 every month OPERA NOW DIGITAL 12 digital issues, plus 33-year archive From L7.12 every month Three easy ways to subscribe magsubscriptions.com/opera-now +44 (0)1722 716997 subscriptions@markallengroup.com Stated subscription rates are based on a monthly credit card…

La Fenice’s production of Faust differs from the smaller-scale premiere last June during the pandemic when the singers and orchestra performed in what would normally be the stalls area of the Teatro La Fenice. Now with the theatre back to its normal layout, director Joan Anton Richi has revised the staging to explore the opera through the lens of cinema. When the curtain rises, old movies flicker to an end, watched by an aged movie star, the wheelchair-bound and suicidal Faust (Ivan Ayon-Rivas). He summons Satan, the delightfully dastardly Alex Esposito, more a saviour than a devil who arrives in a sharp white suit and hat with promises of eternal youth. When Faust is shown a glimpse of Marguerite, he doesn’t hesitate and his soul is sold quicker than you…

Interviewed about their new production of Lohengrin in Salzurg, Jossi Wieler and his creative team (Anna Viebrock and Sergio Morabito) declared: ‘We are recounting a thriller!’ That is why the guessing game about the disappearance of Gottfried, Elsa’s younger brother, begins during the opera’s orchestral prelude. We see a man (or is it a woman?) with blond locks, in a white shirt and black trousers. He is being minutely observed by a woman (Ortrud, as later becomes clear). Suddenly the ‘young man’ walks to a pond and fishes a black wig out of the water and tries in vain to put it on. Then he doffs his male clothes and from a hidden bag takes a blue dress puts it on. Who is who? Everyone now tries to find out.…

With astute management, imaginative programming and employment of firstrate artists, the Dutch National Opera ranks among the premier league of European opera companies. It has, however, largely avoided the bel canto repertory. So the decision to embark on Donizetti’s ‘Tudor Trilogy’ is an important step forward, and a truly outstanding performance of Anna Bolena amply justified the venture. Admittedly, what made it so impressive was not so much the virtuoso singing associated with this style of Italian opera but rather the intense drama generated by the musical idiom and reinforced by Jetske Mijnssen’s superb production. This was no trite historical pageant with colourful costumes and extravagant sets; instead, a bleak psychological exploration of the fate of a woman caught in a hinterland of rejection and betrayal. Ben Baur’s stage designs…

Wagner BelAir BAC165 When this production premiered at the Berlin Staatsoper in 2018 it got a bad rap from many quarters, particularly for sound imbalance and Barenboim’s slow conducting sometimes submerging the singers, plus Dmitri Tcherniakov’s interpretation was not deemed a success. But one of the advantages of a filmed performance is that the sound can be engineered and the camera focused where desired. And consequently here, directed for TV by Andy Sommer, it seems a highly successful and cohesive staging. Tcherniakov sets the opening act in the meeting room of a contemporary and luxuriously fitted yacht on which Tristan is carrying Isolde to her future life with King Marke – it is going well, the deal is in the bag. But fate intervenes, or in Tcherniakov’s view it is…

Favourite time of day? Since having a dog a long while back (he’s been dead for 14 years), I have become a very very early riser, waking up at five or six in the morning. I’m usually in bed by nine. In Scotland in the summer, it just about gets dark but I love it at around three in the morning seeing the sun come up. I go for walks that early because there’s no one else around – actually there’s never anyone around in that bit of Scotland anyway! Favourite season? Autumn, the colours and that first chill. I like it because it threatens bad weather and sunny watery skies. Favourite colour? Blue, I suppose, I do wear lots of blue. In Scotland I have one of those things…

Remembering Anne Howells – the down-to-earth Diva Anne Howells, one of the most popular British opera singers of her day, has died at the age of 81. She was a superb singer-actress, giving vivid portrayals of the characters she sang. Her flare for comedy was especially appreciated in roles such as Mozart’s Dorabella and Cherubino, and she also bought a wistful, thoroughly engaging charm to Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier – which she said was her favourite role. Her introduction to it came with a touch of her characteristic grit when her agent phoned to ask if she could step into a dress rehearsal at Covent Garden because the mezzo singing Octavian had fallen ill. ‘You don’t have to go on stage, just read it from the score in the wings,’…

Baroque opera comes alive at Versailles. That’s something of a general (but true) comment: but rarely can it have glowed, charmed and entertained as here. From staging to singing and acting to general tomfoolery (of which more anon), Rameau’s Platée found a new sense of life. Rameau’s setting of Adrien-Joseph Le Valois d’Orville’s libretto takes the legend of a swamp-dwelling ugly water nymph who believes Jupiter, Head God, is in love with her. Here, she is both nymph and ‘nymphomane’. The plot is rather cruel, and we certainly feel that in this production: the force of Juno’s laughter when she finds out that Platee is the focus of her husband Jupiter’s wondering attentions feels harsh, which enables the final scene of Platee’s misery to become truly heart-breaking (so much so…

In a European operatic landscape that tends to favour a bleak minimalism and modernism in its stagings these days, it was a breath of fresh air to see Hugo de Ana’s traditional and opulent-looking La traviata for the National Theatre of Croatia which placed the equally sumptuous orchestral sound front and centre of this production. The Argentinian director, who also designed the set and costumes, relocated the action to 1920s Paris and didn’t spare the bling. The stage shimmered and sparkled from the sequins and fringing on the costumes to the highly polished floors and mirrors. To this de Ana added plenty of gilt and adorned the walls with large tapestries and mildly pornographic paintings. Such lavishness was a stark contrast to the threadbare atelier, atmospherically lit by lighting director…

Opera della Luna The UK Premiere of Jake Heggie’s Three Decembers introduces an opera that, in its one-act, 90-minute span, manages to traverse three decades, and a vast amount of emotion. While Heggie’s Dead Man Walking (2000) attained huge success, nothing since has quite scaled those heights. Commissioned by Houston Grand Opera in 2008, Three Decembers is based on Terence McNally’s Some Christmas Letters, to a libretto by Gene Scheer. The ‘three Decembers’ in question are 1986, 1996 and 2006. As AIDS cast its horrific shadow, the opera follows the dysfunctional family of Madeleine Mitchell (an actress, played by Lucy Schaufer), her daughter Bea (Llio Evans) and her son Charlie (Jean-Kristof Bouton). Heggie’s achievement in taking a wordy libretto and creating a musico-dramatic structure that is both intelligible and intelligent…