Table of contents for November 2022 in Opera Now

Deborah Colker is a Brazilian writer, theatre director, dancer and choreographer, whose exuberant new production of Osvaldo Golijov’s opera Ainadamar is currently running at Scottish Opera. The opera, Colker’s first, is one that she seems born to direct. A recipient of the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dance 2021, she is no stranger to large-scale theatrical undertakings, renowned for her work with Cirque du Soleil and the 2016 Summer Olympics opening ceremony. Ainadamar (Arabic for Fountain of Tears) celebrates the life of Spanish poet and playwright Federico García Lorca and his relationship with the Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu in an explosive fusion of flamenco dance and opera. It is currently being given its Scottish premiere, and first fully staged UK production, by Scottish Opera in collaboration with Opera…

Review by Robert Thicknesse The days when Northern Ireland Opera, still only 12 years old, had fun frightening the horses are long gone: the first artistic director Oliver Mears offered some strong meat in Calixto Bieito’s brazen Turandot, and Salome raised a few hackles too. Subsequent artistic directors have been easier on the audience, which is fine when there is only one main-stage show per year. And of course there is quite a lot you can do with shows like Bohème and Traviata, the offerings directed by the current artistic director Cameron Menzies, without blowing the bloody doors off. The crowd responded with startling rapture to a show that was slick and attractive without being wildly exciting. But it did most of the important things well: a stylish dark set…

Review by Jürgen Gahre The Austrian village of Erl, on the River Inn, offers music lovers two big opera and concert houses: the state-of-the-art Festspielhaus, which fits in harmoniously with the mountainous landscape; and the somewhat older, very spacious Passionsspielhaus where Wagner’s operas are performed during the annual Tiroler Festspiele. The scheduled production of Rossini’s Bianca e Falliero had to be cancelled because of Covid. So this year’s Festival audiences had to content themselves with Wagner’s Walküre. Although the world-famous mezzo soprano Brigitte Fassbaender has been active as a director in many different opera houses over the years (she is now 83), up to now she has not dared to produce Richard Wagner’s epic tetralogy. As the working conditions for such a massive undertaking have to be optimal, her choice…

1. Which three roles were created together by Anna Schikaneder, Anselm Handelgruber and Franz Anton Maurer? 2. What links Tonio in La fille du régiment with the title role in Carmen? 3. Who first composed a completion of Turandot after Puccini’s death? 4. Dig deep with Norma and Stuart! Who are they? 5. What do the casts of Billy Budd and Le jongleur de Notre-Dame have in common? 6. What character links café Central Perk in TV series Friends to Götterdämmerung? 7. How did diva Zinka Milanov suggest that the General Manager stop overlong applause for her at the Met? 8. Which film star sings a very creditable “Ah! Fuyez” from Massenet’s Manon in The Call of the Flesh, 1930? 9. Which late Italian baritone shares a surname with an…

Ludovic Tézier is today’s foremost Verdi baritone, in demand at every major opera house around the world. His richly coloured vocal instrument can be described as ‘manly’, with an authentic, muscular Verdian style and powerful stage presence. He is ideal casting for opera’s losers-in-love and villains, especially in Verdi’s operas, in which the baritone usually gives the tenor hero a very good run for his money! Tézier is at present singing the ferocious Ethiopian King, Amonasro, in Covent Garden’s production of Aida, conducted by Sir Antonio Pappano. There is no doubt that although he also excels in bel canto, Puccini, some Russian roles as well as Mozart and Wagner (Wolfram in Tannhauser, for instance), his voice seems to have been born for Verdi. ‘It’s true that my voice seems to…

Venice is the most operatic of cities. Disembark on her shores, and you are plunged into a world that feels unreal – aworld of water, light, flamboyance, and centuries overflowing with drama and imagination. With the hyperreality of Venice as a backdrop, Cartier, the famous jewellery firm and a major sponsor of the Film Biennale which was running at the time, presented an intriguing and original opera-in-progress across two very different stages – one real and one virtual – on the serene Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore. Eugenie’s Tears is a multimedia work featuring singers, chorus and an instrumental ensemble, devised and developed by the celebrated French actress and filmmaker Mélanie Laurent. It tells the story of a mermaid, Eugenie, who saves Igor, a sailor, from drowning. They fall in…

Summer country-house opera is surely now the default mode for the British opera scene, with offerings often more various, professionally produced, better cast and often more enjoyable than our poor raddled old national companies can match. Most country house events are still pretty exclusive, however. Basically you have to work for a hedge-fund for full, nonbankrupting enjoyment. So, where can opera lovers with average resources go to get their fix? Easy: give the whole established country house jamboree a swerve (following the good precedent of the venerable Times opera critic Rodney Milnes who ditched the whole picnic-opera merry-go-round in a memorably acidic column 20 years ago) and enjoy the unpretentious delights of the London Fringe. This year’s offerings took me from Blackheath in the South East to Chalfont St Giles…

Review by Karyl Charna Lynn After a Covid-enforced hiatus, Opera Philadelphia’s Festival O is back, albeit somewhat slimmed down in terms of its live offering. The focus this year was an extensive Opera on Film Festival, featuring more than 30 examples of cinematic treatment of opera, from classic to contemporary, screened at the Philadephia Film Center. However, what Festival O’s live performances lacked in quantity, they made up for in quality. The event’s dual missions remain firmly intact: to unearth rarely performed operas and stretch the boundaries of what opera actually is. The festival’s highlights were Rossini’s Otello, and Hosokawa’s The Raven. Rossini’s Otello was immensely popular during the 1800s. These days, performances are rare – Verdi’s setting of Shakespeare’s tragedy overshadows Rossini’s opera seria in terms of its emotional…

Review by Yukiko Kishinami The New National Theatre Tokyo opened the 2022/23 season in style with a new production of Giulio Cesare. Originally scheduled for April 2020, the performances had to be cancelled shortly before the premiere due to the pandemic. NNTT’s artistic director Kazushi Ono told the disappointed cast and staff that the production would be rescheduled, hopefully with the same people. He kept his promise, and most of the original singers rejoined the production. Directed by Laurent Pelly, this staging, first seen at the Paris in 2011, set the whole story inside a museum store where relics from Ancient Egypt and Rome are kept and characters come to life. It’s a clever idea that anyone whose imagination has run wild about historical figures in a museum can relate…

Opera North general director to retire Opera North has announced that Richard Mantle OBE DL will be retiring from the role of general director next year having held the role for almost three decades. The Leeds-based opera company has begun its search for his successor. Mantle joined Opera North in 1994, after previous roles with Edmonton Opera, Scottish Opera, and English National Opera. He was awarded an OBE for services to music in 2013 as well as honorary doctorates from the Universities of Leeds and York. Mantle, who is one of the longest serving and influential general directors in the business, said: ‘I anticipate that I will step down at the end of 2023; the exact date will be flexible depending on the appointment of a new general director’. He…

'Co-produced with…’ is a phrase you’ll often see in your programme book at the opera. The likelihood is that the list of companies involved in the production you are seeing will have put their heads together under the auspices of Opera Europa. Based in Brussels, Opera Europa provides a forum for professional development and artistic collaboration for opera companies and houses throughout Europe (in the widest geographical sense of the word). Since 2003, the organisation has been led by Nicholas Payne, who has worked in senior roles with most of the UK’s major companies: the Royal Opera House, Welsh National Opera, English National Opera and Opera North (in Leeds). Now, after a few months short of 20 years in the job, Payne is retiring as general director of Opera Europa.…

Back in 1986, an enlightened friend played me the ‘Pierrot Tanzlied’ from Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die tote Stadt (The Dead City). It was love at first listen. I sought out the whole opera on LP – Erich Leinsdorf ’s recording was the sole option – then went on to study it for a university dissertation. Later I wrote a biography of the composer. The trouble was that very few people seemed to have heard of him. Worse, those that had would come out with terms like, ‘Korngold? Are you serious?’ Today, however, the opera world is serious about him too. Die tote Stadt and its composer are having a ‘moment’, and possibly more. This year alone, the video of Simon Stone’s production from the Bavarian State Opera, starring Marlis Petersen…

Raffaele Pe is an exceptionally gifted countertenor with a fascinating voice, possessing a burnished, radiant timbre and a certain ‘mezzo’ quality. Added to this, he has looks to die for and that elusive attribute, ‘star quality’. He has been delighting British audiences since 2018, when he made his debut at The Grange Festival in Hampshire in a vocally thrilling and deliciously witty portrayal of Nerone in Agrippina. Pe returned to The Grange last summer with a stunning interpretation of another Handel hero, the title role in Tamerlano. During the run of those performances he also made his debut at the Wigmore Hall. Another project at Wigmore Hall is on the pipeline in 2024, the year which will also see his return to The Grange as Nerone, this time in Monteverdi’s…

Review by Anthony Ogus The Leeds Opera Festival, organised by the enterprising Northern Opera Group, goes from strength to strength. Its 2022 offerings included Handel’s Silla, a single performance of Krenek’s The Dictator and, to enhance the theme of political abuse, a commissioned opera entitled Power (composed by Christella Litras, libretto by Mike Kenny), given at seven venues across the city. Sadly, I was able to attend only the Handel, staged at a splendid new theatre in Leeds Beckett University. This provides comfortable seating for the audience and good acoustics but also a larger performance space and excellent lighting facilities, all of which were exploited to good effect in the rare outing of Silla. Dating from 1713 and apparently performed only once then, it is not well known, perhaps because…

Review by Robert Levine Now in its sixth season, the entirely professional Berkshire Opera Festival operates out of a 600-seat, finely refurbished, 117-year-old gem of a theatre right off the Main Street in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. In previous seasons, I have seen an ingenious and wonderfully sung Don Pasquale and a Falstaff which was reminiscent of the old Franco Zeffirelli production at the Met. Innovative, clever, and using some well-known and some up-and-coming singers and seasoned directors and designers, it has become a ‘destination’ of sorts for New Yorkers, Bostonians and local opera lovers. This year’s programme included Jake Heggie’s AIDS-era opera Three Decembers and High on the Ramparts, spotlighting the music of Black composers. Also in the mix was the run of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which fascinated and frustrated.…

Review by Francis Muzzu • Photography by Petra Hajská Beneath the delicacy of its aqueous washes of sound, Rusalka is a hardy beast – it survives a plethora of stage interpretations that try to penetrate the subconscious murkiness lying beneath the simple fairy tale of love found and sacrificed. At English National Opera, David Pountney staged it as a probing coming-of-age psychodrama. By way of contrast, the Met’s current production by Mary Zimmerman is traditionally lavish and showcases its stars with golden glow. But in a concert performance Rusalka has nowhere to hide, no possible obfuscation: it stands or falls by its own merits and those of its performers. For such an experience there is probably no better place than the Dvořák Hall in Prague’s Rudolfinum. An example of luxuriously…