BREAKING NEWS: Opera & Ballet

Shipwrecked: Robinson Crusoé at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 12:09:39 +0000

Offenbach – Robinson Crusoé

Robinson – Sahy Ratia
Edwige – Julie Fuchs
Vendredi – Adèle Charvet
Sir William Crusoé – Laurent Naouri
Toby – Marc Mauillon
Jim-Cocks – Rodolphe Briand
Suzanne – Emma Fekete
Deborah – Julie Pasturaud
Atkins – Matthieu Toulouse

accentus, Les Musiciens du Louvre / Marc Minkowski.
Stage director – Laurent Pelly.

Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, France. Friday, December 12th, 2025.

For its final staged opera production of 2025, the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées has chosen to present Offenbach’s Robinson Crusoé. Premiered in 1867, it was Offenbach’s second work for the Opéra Comique, and his attempt to move away from the Opéra bouffe he had been commercially successful with, to a more dramatic idiom. It was reasonably successful in its initial run, but then lapsed into relative obscurity until the second half of the twentieth century. Who better to take us through the work than the team of Marc Minkowski and his Musiciens du Louvre, with Laurent Pelly directing – artists with considerable experience in Offenbach’s music.

Photo: © Vincent Pontet

Offenbach’s opera, with a libretto by Eugène Cormon and Hector-Jonathan Crémieux, is loosely based on Daniel Defoe’s celebrated book. It takes us from Crusoé’s family life in Bristol, to his adventures with his sidekick Vendredi in Brazil, where his love interest Edwige, and their friends Toby and Suzanne, come to rescue him. While the music may not be top drawer Offenbach, it does contain some splendid numbers, not least Edwige’s waltz ‘Conduisez-moi vers celui qui m’adore!’. For this production, the dialogue was extensively rewritten by Agathe Mélinand. Pelly sets the production initially in the family home, which appears to be in the 1950s, the set revolving around to show different perspectives on the home. Later, Crusoé appears to be ‘shipwrecked’ in a homeless zone of a large city. Having visited Brazil several times, the palm tree and skyscrapers reminded me of downtown Säo Paulo. The downtown of that city contains a zone locally known as ‘Cracolândia’, where significant numbers of homeless addicts live. It’s one of the most harrowing places I’ve ever visited, the sight of so many people completely out of it, living in horrifying circumstances is something I’ll never forget. I don’t know whether Pelly has ever visited Brazil’s largest city, but I must admit how the island was portrayed on stage, with Crusoé having a drug-induced fit made me extremely uncomfortable, while so many around me found it entertaining. The fact that Vendredi kept interpolating Castilian Spanish into the dialogue also felt rather Euro-centric a perspective. Perhaps I’m overthinking things, but the initial impression of Pelly’s staging of Act 2 was problematic.

Photo: © Vincent Pontet

Indeed, the entire evening until that point felt like a show that was trying a little too hard. Act 1 had the cast moving around in formation, with some synchronized dance moves. In a way, the staging felt that it reflected the problematic nature of the work, unsure of whether it wanted to be serious or comic. Then, in the second half of Act 2, something happened. It took wing. When Suzanne, Toby and Edwige were captured by cannibals, these were shown to be the chorus all dressed up as Donald Trump lookalikes, something that sent the audience into fits of laughter and applause, while Suzanne and Toby were moved along a conveyor belt in a meat factory. What Pelly asks of his entire cast, including the chorus, in terms of movement is immense – the synchronized dancing must have required painstaking rehearsal and yet it was dispatched with the utmost uniformit. And yet, the final tableau of Crusoé sitting alone under a palm tree left a much more equivocal impression. Had we just spent the evening witnessing the drug-addled dream of an addict? Is Pelly attempting to make a point about drug abuse and poverty? Was the geographical and linguistic confusion between Bristol, Brazil, the United States, and Castilian Spanish deliberate or just a lack of awareness? It’s hard to tell, but I can’t deny a sense of leaving tonight with a show that didn’t quite know what it was.

Photo: © Vincent Pontet

Musically, it gave us so much to enjoy. Minkowski understands this music like few others and he drew out such a wealth of sonorities from his musicians. What struck me immediately was the sheer character of the wind playing, whether the mellowness of the bassoons, the penetrating oboes, the mellifluous flutes or fruity clarinets. The horns were similarly deliciously raspy. Offenbach’s score brings out so many lyrical impressions of birdsong in Act 2, and these were realized in the most beguiling way. In Act 1, there was also a moment in which the orchestra reproduced the sound of an organ and this again was utterly charming. The all-important percussion was wonderfully immediate in sound and the strings always true in intonation. This was orchestral playing of the very highest distinction. Minkowski’s tempi were terrifically springy, always pushing the action forward on a constantly-pulsing rhythmic base, one that filled the room in vibrant momentum. The chorus, provided by accentus and prepared by Thomas Tacquet, managed to maintain the integrity of the sound even with the extremely busy staging that they were asked to participate in. The tenors and basses were particularly firm in tone.

Photo: © Vincent Pontet

Sahy Ratia stepped in for the originally-cast Lawrence Brownlee a few months ago. The young, Madagascar-born, French-trained tenor is already enjoying a busy international career. He clearly has the kind of implicit musicality that cannot be taught, dispatching Offenbach’s writing with an elegant line and excellent clarity of diction. The voice itself isn’t the biggest, but it carries well enough, while the top does lose a little in quality and isn’t ideally integrated – but this is something that can be worked on. Ratia is also a very engaging actor, his wide-eyed optimism of Act 1 was brought to life not only through the freshness of his tone, but also in his energetic acting, while he gave a very convincing impression of a drug-induced fit in Act 2. Certainly a name to watch in the lighter tenor roles.

Photo: © Vincent Pontet

Julie Fuchs gave us a tremendous Edwige. Pelly’s staging had her dancing most energetically in her waltz, which she did all while dispatching reams of pearly coloratura. She offered us wonderfully poised, floated singing in her declaration of love to Crusoé in Act 1, while the bravura writing of Act 2 held no terrors for her – and she demonstrated a genuine trill. Another winning assumption from this always charming singer. Emma Fekete also demonstrated a fabulous technique as Suzanne. Her soprano is gossamer light, able to turn the corners with ease. Trained in Amsterdam, the Québécoise singer already has a burgeoning career on this side of the Atlantic. Her technique is well schooled, the runs impeccably dispatched, and she has terrific comic timing. Her sparring with Marc Mauillon’s Toby, as each decided who should be sacrificed to the cannibals first, was terrific.

Photo: © Vincent Pontet

Mauillon sang his music in a focused, easily-produced tenor, bright in tone with the text always forward. Adèle Charvet sang Vendredi in a warm, sunny mezzo, with an impeccable legato. The top opened up with ease, shining into the room. Laurent Naouri was a welcome presence as Sir William Crusoé. His bass-baritone still maintains the firmness of yore and his stage presence is as imposing as ever. Julie Pasturaud sang Deborah in an even, fruity mezzo, with a warm bottom. She blended exquisitely with Fuchs and Fekete in their ensembles, the precision of their tuning and attack most impressive. As Jim-Cocks, former neighbour in Bristol and now chef to the cannibals, Rodolphe Briand, brought a penetrating tenor and verbal acuity to his assignment.

In fact it did break down into five sections with three moments for silent reflection (listed in the programme as the three movements of John Cage’s 4’33” (I’ve seen that done before!) and a fourth “break” which was actually a recording of John Cage’s talk At the Middle (which of course came just before the end. Each section, onaturally, was played at a different “station”.

The choice of cello material was quite varied. The first section featured dream like, sparse pieces by Ana Sokolovic (Cinque danze per violino solo, No.2) and Kaija Saariaho (Long Live Love) followed by pascal Dusapin’s Imago II which was still quite meditative in mood but featured longer continuous phrases for bowed cello.

György Kurtág’s Árnyak and Ruhelos, run together, started very quietly and very sparsely with a certain amount of extended technique but gradually things got busier, louder, even quite violent with some fairly heavy vocalising. Péter Eötvös’ Two Poems to Polly took things even further with the poem about, inter alia, temple bells and hope, being chanted over a mix of plucked and bowed strings.

After that, Paul Desenne’s Jaguar Songs sounded almost conventional. Sure, it’s atonal and involves a certain amount of extended technique but mostly it comes over as the sort of highly virtuosic piece that might have been written, ceteris paribus, in any era. Nor would I want to suggest that because this piece was overtly virtuosic that the rest of the programme was in any way easy. It was all very complex stuff played with supreme skill.

Readers with a long internet memory may remember Jean-Paul Sartre’s Cookbook from which I offer this extract; “Today I made a Black Forest cake out of five pounds of cherries and a live beaver, challenging the very definition of the word cake.” Arguably Peter Eom’s approach to the solo cello recital is comparable.

Photo credits: The first one is me, the other three are Stelth Ng

Rogers v. Rogers

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 17:23:39 +0000

Michael Healey’s Rogers v. Rogers directed by Chris Abraham opened at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday night. It’s a sort of follow up to The Master Plan in that it’s Toronto based and deals with corporate greed and incompetence coupled to governmental ineptitude and general inability to keep up with the corporate world. It’s different in that it’s two related stories mashed together and, more notably, in that Tom Rooney plays all the characters.

It’s set in the aftermath of Ted Rodgers’ death. Edward Rodgers is scheming to gain effective control of the company despite the skepticism (at best) of his siblings and most of his late fathers’ cronies on the board. At the same time Rogers; Canada’s, second largest telecom, is trying to take over Shaw, the fourt largest in a move that would have alarm bells ringing in any country that actually cared about the vitality of its business sector.

The first character we meet is Canada’s Competition Commissioner. He’s a fish out of water in that he’s an Ottawa bureaucrat who actually cares about what he is doing and isn’t just going through the motions of opposing the merger. He’s intense, sweary and on the verge of a breakdown.

Then there’s Edward Rogers. Basically he’s a rather dim, food obsessed, completely amoral failure who is trying desperately to impress his dead father. His overriding ambition is to hold the CEO title regardless of any collateral damage in the process or whether he has any ideas about how to take the company forward..

Meanwhile his sisters and mother; who are also members of a family trust that ultimately controls the company, just want a competent CEO installed so that they can get on with being extremely rich without too many distractions. In this they are largely supported by the other directors notably Liberal hack David Peterson.

There are so many fuck ups along the way. Edward’s Bay Street charm offensive backfires largely because he doesn’t have any. The stooge who he is trying to install as CEO gets a call from the actual CEO in mid plot and thinking he’s refused the call puts his phone in his pocket thus allowing the CEO to listen in on the whole plot. Edward tries to spring a surprise coup dethroning the CEO at a hastily called board meeting which is held over Zoom because of the pandemic. All the things that can go wrong in a Zoom meeting attended by elderly technophobes (and Rogers technology) do go wrong. The plot collapses. The sisters sue and eventually are paid off by Edward. Finally he’s CEO though at the cost of massive reputational damage to the company, significant revenue loss and a drop in the share price.

And despite all the evidence and an outpouring of public indignation the Shaw takeover goes through. Of course it does. No Liberal government is going to disturb one of the cosy oligopolies that dominate the remnants of the Canadian economy that aren’t foreign owned.

The story is a bit gut wrenching but the script, the staging and Rooney’s performance combine to produce a satire that’s as laugh out loud funny as it is depressing. Rooney manages his body language and verbal delivery coupled with just a few props; Edward always wears a jacket with a red pocket square. When he’s talking to his wife she has earrings, he doesn’t so wearing one earring allows a 180 degree turn to indicate a change of character. Coffee cup and sirt sleeves indicate the Competition Commissioner and so on. And, of course there’s a subtly different accent/dialect for each character.

There’s a bit of backstory about the Rogers family narrated in the character of some sort of eastern European butler/valet who is the nearest thing to a parent the Rogers kids have. The poor man can’t even tempt the food obsessed Edward away from the door (where he waits expectantly with the dogs for Ted’s return) with brussels sprouts fried in duck fat.

The Zoom meeting which is really the climax of the whole thing is brilliantly done. The whole of the back of the stage functions as Edward’s screen with subtly different Rooneys displayed in each “cell”. The futzing around is hilarious especially when one of the sisters starts tweeting about what a slimeball her brother is. The elderly mother reads out the mendacious statement that Edward has prepared for her but she’s on mute and doesn’t realise it and when she finally twigs that she’s been had by Edward she goes berserk. And then she dies. The whole mess almost makes one feel sorry for Ted Rogers (almost).

So like The Master Plan it’s a sharp satire on the shortcomings of Canadian politics and business. Maybe events as described aren’t 100% accurate but they are funny and true enough in essence. It’s fast paced cleverly designed and brilliantly acted. Well worth seeing.

Rogers v. Rogers plays at Crow’s Theatre until January 17th.

Photo credits: Dahlia Katz

Opéra Magazine's top-rated recordings for December 2025 and January 2026

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 15:07:00 +0000

None of the recordings in the latest issue of France’s Opéra Magazine is designated their 'pick of the month.' I don’t know if this is because the new editor has decided against it for good, or if it’s just because their Christmas-gift suggestions have taken the place, in this edition, of the customary ‘coup de coeur’.

The gift suggestions can’t have taken much thought. They are Joan Sutherland’s complete Decca opera recordings, 1959-1970 (49 CDs), Jonas Kaufmann’s Decca recordings (15 CDs), Andreas Scholl’s ‘legendary’ Harmoni Munci recitals (6 CDs), and a set issued by Alpha Classics as a tribute to the late Jodie Devos (7 CDs).

They give their tip-top ‘Diamond’ award to two CD sets.

The first, which also comes with a DVD, is Porpora’s Polifemo, with José Coca Loza, Franco Fagioli, Julia Lezhneva, Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian, Eléonore Pancrazi and the orchestra of the Opéra Royal (i.e. in Versailles) under Stefan Plewniak. ‘If any single opera can be said to epitomise baroque bel canto, it is Porpora’s Polifemo.’ The ‘period’ production seen on the DVD is by Justin Way and Christian Lacroix. This set, they say, easily bears comparison with its main competitors.

The second ‘Diamond’ is awarded to Philippe Jaroussky’s Gelosia, an album of Italian cantatas from the 17th century that includes two world premiere recordings, both of works called Gelosia, by Porpora and Baldassare Galuppi. ‘A masterly demonstration of restraint and contained emotion.’

The Futures Market

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 15:00:52 +0000

The Futures Market is a new on-line opera by Douglas Rodger (librettist) and Njo Kong Kie (composer) featuring Teiya Kasahara, Derek Kwan, Keith Lam and Wesley Hui. Some readers may remember Njo Kong Kie as the composer of the music for Mr Shi and His Lover a few years ago and probably just about all Toronto opera people will be familiar with the singers.

It’s basically a “cliff-hanger” with fourteen nine minute or so episodes so spoilers would be mean. All I can say, having watched the first episode, is that is set in a prison and that it looks like organ harvesting is involved. There’s some excellent singing from Keith and Teiya in that episode and the piano score, played by the composer, is very atmospheric.

It’s filmed concert style (Videography by Blake Hannahson. Sound engineer Brandon Wells) and looks and sounds good. All the episodes are now up on Youtube. Here’s the url for episode 1. The url for the next episode is contained in the page for each episode or you can just subscribe to the channel.

I’m going to return to this when I’ve watched the whole series.

Holiday Spirit: The Night Before Christmas at the Bayerische Staatsoper

Mon, 08 Dec 2025 12:26:51 +0000

Rimsky-Korsakov – The Night Before Christmas (очь перед Рождеством)

Tsaritsa – Violeta Urmana
Village Head – Sergei Leiferkus
Chub – Dmitry Ulyanov
Oksana – Elena Tsallagova
Solokha – Ekaterina Semenchuk
Vakula – Sergey Skorokhodov
Panas – Milan Siljanov
Deacon Osip Nikiforovich – Vsevolod Grivnov
Patsyuk – Matti Turunen
Devil – Tansel Akzeybek
Woman with violet-blue nose – Alexandra Durseneva
Woman with ordinary nose – Laura Aikin

Bayerischer Staatsopernchor, Bayerisches Staatsorchester / Vladimir Jurowski.
Stage director – Barrie Kosky.

Bayerische Staatsoper, Nationaltheater, Munich, Germany. Sunday, December 7th, 2026.

Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Night Before Christmas or Christmas Eve as it’s also known in the Anglophone world, is a work that’s barely known in the West. It’s a shame because it has some terrific music, greatly inspired by Ukrainian folk music, as a detailed note in tonight’s program book reveals. Barrie Kosky’s new staging for the Bayerische Staatsoper opened last month, and with it, the Staatsoper has given us a holiday treat, under the direction of house Music Director, Vladimir Jurowski.

Photo: © Geoffroy Schied

This is a work of sheer fantasy, based in village life, with the Devil working in tandem with the sorceress Solokha, while her son, Vakula, is taken with the lovely Oksana, to the extent that he flies on the Devil’s back to St Petersburg to ask the Tsarina for her shoes – since this is what Oksana wanted. Kosky’s staging has many of his familiar trademarks: the mass dancing for the chorus, the glitzy danseurs, and the fantastical visual environment. Moreover, I didn’t know how much I needed to see the great Violeta Urmana as the Tsarina descending from the flies on a silver throne, and being handed a cigarette and some vodka by her attendants, but this has to be the most fabulous stage picture I’ve seen all year. Kosky sets the action in a single set, by Klaus Grünberg, with ladders scattered around that the principals and acrobats climb. The evening opened with the chorus seated around the set, applauding Jurowski as he entered. At first, it made me wonder if we were watching a village performance of the events in the plot. In fact, the stage crowded with people made it very hard to focus on any one element – whether the principals, ballet, or indeed the crowd. As the evening developed, however, the crowd disappeared and the action unfolded in front of us with the principals, ballet, and acrobats as the core focus. Perhaps, by starting with the crowd on stage, this was Kosky’s way of pulling us in, of making us the audience rather than the crowd on stage. Perhaps also, I’m simply overthinking this, and having the crowd on stage at first, watching and engaging, was just a way to start the evening off.

Photo: © Geoffroy Schied

Still, it’s an extremely visual show and the cast entered into it with great spirit and seemed to be having a wonderful time. Rather than having Vakula fly on the Devil’s back, Kosky instead had some acrobats hanging from ropes high up on stage. It was seriously impressive, if not more than slightly anxiety-inducing to watch. Similarly, the introduction to the Tsarina’s palace had a group of danseurs of all genders, dressed in scarlet ballgowns and turbans, with choreography by Otto Pichler. The oversized costumes, by Klaus Bruns, with Ekaterina Semenchuk’s Solokha given impressively generous bustiness, seemed redolent of cartoons. There was an undoubted joyfulness to Kosky’s staging that one could not help but be won over by, that sense of fantasy that simply brought the audience along for the ride, with personenregie so vivid and engaging that he had clearly inspired the principals and the chorus.

Photo: © Geoffroy Schied

Musically, it reflected the extremely high standards one would expect at this address. This is a score full of changing moods, of constant tempo fluctuations and a wealth of colour. Jurowski led this excellent orchestra with a sure hand, bringing out a seemingly limitless palette of orchestral tints from his musicians. The fanfares at the entrance of the Tsarina were vibrantly ringing, the horn playing throughout was impeccable and there was a lyricism to the phrasing that pulled one in just as much as the staging did. There was a poetry to the playing of the solo violin, sadly not credited in the program book, and the clarinets and flutes played with wonderful mellifluousness. The chorus, prepared by Christoph Heil, sang with impressive blend and tuning, and made a huge noise in the big choral scenes. They also entered fully into the spirit of Kosky’s staging, executing the complex stage moves with aplomb.

Photo: © Geoffroy Schied

Elena Tsallagova gave us a delightful Oksana. In her opening aria she also busted some seriously impressive dance moves, while never compromising the beauty or integrity of the sound. Her pearly soprano is focused in tone, with easy agility in the florid writing, all dispatched in an elegant line. She also knows how to use the language to colour the sound, the words always nice and forward. Sergey Skorokhodov sang Vakula in a muscular tenor. At the start of the evening, it did sound that the voice needed a bit of heavy lifting to get up to the top during his initial romance to Oksana. As the evening progressed, however, he warmed up nicely, the top emerging with more freedom, filling the room impressively. Semenchuk has quite the repertoire these days, her roles ranging from Marfa to Abigaille and Turandot. She’s a fine singer and a terrifically watchable actress, but I regret to say that to my ears, the contralto role of Solokha sits on the low side for her, lacking the ultimate in organ-pedal low notes that a true contralto would bring, and not always managing to fully reach beyond the footlights. Of course, Semenchuk was never less than completely engaging and entered fully into the character and Kosky’s conception of her.

Photo: © Geoffroy Schied

Tansel Akzeybek sang the Devil in his focused tenor, easily-produced, with the text always forward. He was extremely brave in the way he negotiated climbing the ladders on stage. Dmitry Ulyanov brought his big, resonant bass to the role of Chub, Oksana’s father. It was a pleasure to see the venerable Sergei Leiferkus again on this stage. Even at age 79, the voice is instantly recognizable, still so firm and healthy in tone. There are baritones half his age who would kill for an instrument as vigorous as his. Milan Siljanov brought his handsome, burnished bass to the role of Panas, while Vsevolod Grivnov brought his big, vibrant tenor to the role of the Deacon, the voice pinging into the house with focused amplitude. Matti Turunen gave us a luxury cameo as Patsyuk, his bass absolutely huge, booming out imposingly. In her brief, but important, scene as the Tsarina, Urmana gave us a masterclass in holding the stage, through her clarity of diction, focus of tone, and vocal amplitude. Even in the smallest of roles, we had singers of the calibre of Alexandra Durseneva and Laura Aikin, dispatching their rol

Meat Market: Lucrezia Borgia at the Teatro de la Maestranza

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 14:56:09 +0000

Donizetti – Lucrezia Borgia

Don Alfonso – Krzysztof Bączyk
Donna Lucrezia Borgia – Marina Rebeka
Gennaro – Duke Kim
Maffio Orsini – Teresa Iervolino
Jeppo Liverotto – Jorge Franco
Don Apostolo Gazella – Pablo Gálvez
Ascanio Petrucci – Julien Van Mellaerts
Oloferno Vitellozzo – Cristiano Olivieri
Gubetta – Matías Moncada
Rustighello – Moisés Marin
Astolfo – Alejandro López

Coro Teatro de la Maestranza, Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla / Maurizio Benini.
Stage director – Silvia Paoli.

Teatro de la Maestranza, Seville, Spain. Saturday, December 6th, 2025.

This evening’s performance of Lucrezia Borgia at the Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, was my first performance at this handsome theatre in over a decade. I really should visit more often, since they offer a stimulating program of opera, with judicious casting and high musical standards. The runs do tend to be rather short, however. Silvia Paoli’s production, shared with Tenerife, Oviedo and Bologna, is only running for three performances, of which tonight was the second. The biggest interest in this run was the presence of Marina Rebeka in the title role and experienced bel canto conductor, Maurizio Benini, in the pit.

Photo: © Guillermo Mendo – Teatro de la Maestranza

Paoli sets out on her production with an interesting premise. La Borgia is known as a fierce woman, one who had significant impact on the lives of Gennaro’s friends and their families. What Paoli attempts to do is humanize Lucrezia, attempting to explain where her murderous search for power emerged from. The evening opens with a tableau accompanying the opening measures, showing a young girl at home with an adult male, presumably her father. Paoli suggests that the girl is a victim of abuse, in turn influencing Lucrezia’s future life. Indeed, it did make me wonder whether Paoli was similarly suggesting that Gennaro was a product of the abuse, and that Lucrezia’s search for him and attempt to reconcile was her coming to terms with her past. It’s certainly a thoughtful starting point for an exploration of the work. Around Lucrezia, Paoli sets an environment of violence and horror. Don Alfonso keeps a group of women in a cage, who he also abuses, stringing one up and shooting her after his big scene. Similarly, Gennaro and his friends are black shirts, presumably equally violent, and Paoli also suggests, though doesn’t show, that they inflict a gang rape on Lucrezia at the end of the prologue. Indeed, the party in Venice is accompanied by courtesans who accompany Orsini’s opening narration by dry-humping some men on chairs. The set, by Andrea Belli, is a wide-open industrial space, redolent of an abattoir, where blood on the wall sets the scene for an evening of frequent violence.

Photo: © Guillermo Mendo – Teatro de la Maestranza

Paoli’s staging is certainly visually impactful, but also significantly problematic. She choreographs the extras quite significantly, so that they often perambulate around the stage during the duets. Yet her direction of the principals more than often feels perfunctory, frequently/ left to resort to stock operatic gestures. Moreover, their placement on stage wasn’t always optimal. The acoustic of the Maestranza is warm and resonant for the orchestra, yet from my seat in row 12 of the Platea, when the principals were at the back of the set, the sound was too recessed, impacting audibility. I’m also not quite sure why Paoli had the chorus in Act 2 simulating exercise moves, but they were certainly game and got into the spirit of things. Paoli clearly has a vision of how she wants to present the work, her staging starts from a sensible starting point, and she has clearly thought deeply about the characters within, choreographing the action. Yet, that depth of thought didn’t, to my mind, manifest itself in the way she directed the principals. I longed for her to take the extras off the stage and instead allow us to focus on the characters. I also wish she’d developed the Gennaro/Orsini relationship more, the queer subtext not even attempted to be explored. That said, she did give Lucrezia the opportunity to hold the stage alone in her final scene. However, compared to Andrea Bernard’s staging in Florence last month, I found Paoli’s staging to be thoughtful yet lacking in focus on the principals.

Photo: © Guillermo Mendo – Teatro de la Maestranza

Benini achieved some terrific playing from the Real Orquesta Sinfónica de Sevilla. The off-stage band seemed to have been caught off-guard by the zippy tempo in the opening scene, but they settled down quickly. I appreciated the piquancy of the trumpets and the winds were nicely mellifluous. Benini’s reading was based in tempi that felt utterly natural, always elastic and moving with the ebb and flow of the music, giving his principals space to weave their lines, yet never compromising rhythmic impetus and forward momentum. Of course, I did wish that he has asked his strings to play with shorter bow strokes and without vibrato, but this is of course personal taste – although the depth of string tone he did obtain from the band was full of colour. Indeed, Benini showed himself as a master of orchestral colour here, the ethereal sound he achieved from the strings as Gennaro expired was most impressive. The chorus, prepared by Íñigo Sampil, was terrifically lusty, nicely tight in ensemble, and had some impressively focused and warm tenor tone.

Photo: © Guillermo Mendo – Teatro de la Maestranza

This was my third Lucrezia Borgia this year, having seen Lidia Fridman in Rome and Jessica Pratt in Florence. Rebeka demonstrated singing of the finest quality tonight. She managed to make those long, Donizettian lines sound easy: the endless phrases on the breath, the limpid float on high and the immaculate coloratura might sound so effortless, but they belie the hours of work in the studio that go into such an impressive technique. Rebeka was always utterly musical, singing with focus and precision, filling the text with meaning. Her diamantine tone was utterly even from top to bottom, emerging from a rich chestiness, to acuti that shone into the room with focused brilliance. Her opening ‘com’è bello’ was sung with poise and evenness, soaring with ease. In her final scene, she added some daring and always scrupulously musical variations, capping the evening with a thrilling high E-flat. The fact that Benini added a massive ritardando in the coda as we approached the summit might have been gratuitous, but it was utterly tremendous and, as Rebeka held onto the height for a considerable time, it sent the audience wild. More than anything, Rebeka gave us a singing lesson tonight.

Photo: © Guillermo Mendo – Teatro de la Maestranza

Teresa Iervolino made so much of Orsini’s music. As with Rebeka, she understands how this music should go, filling Orsini’s narrations with drama and musicality. Her rich contralto turned the corners with ease, filling out the textures with a Barolo-red tone. She made Orsini’s contributions utterly compelling in a way I’ve never experienced before. Duke Kim brought a focused, bright tenor to Gennaro’s music. Perhaps it was nerves that resulted in a lack of support in this first duet with Lucrezia, as he certainly rallied thereafter. Kim brought a scrupulous and well-schooled attention to the line, with an admirable legato, and he had obviously worked on making the text comprehensible. And yet, undoubtedly as a result of the direction of the principals in the staging, I did find his singing to be more on the anonymous side, certainly decently sung and studied, but I longed for him to unite text, drama and music more.

Photo: © Guillermo Mendo – Teatro de la Maestranza

I had a similar impression of Krzysztof Bączyk’s Don Alfonso. He sang the role superbly, with genuine beauty of tone and a rich, handsome bass, bringing a real bel canto sensibility to his music. This was, however, in opposition to his character and the way he was staged. While we saw a brutal dictator who strung semi-naked women up and shot them, what we heard was a beautifully sung and stylish piece of bel canto. While his Italian was very clear, it struck me that Bączyk could perhaps have coloured the words more to bring the violence of his character to the fore. The remainder of the cast reflected the admirable standards of the house. Pablo Gálvez and Julien Van Mellaerts brought their handsome baritones and firm tone to the roles of Gazella and Petrucci. Matías Moncada sang Gubetta’s music in a warm, rich bass, while Moisés Marin’s focused, textually-aware singing gave pleasure as Rustighello.

Astor Piazzolla’a opera-tango María de Buenos Aires has been recorded, perhaps surprisingly, many times. The latest version comes from the Orchestra Filarmonica della Calabria and conductor Filippo Arlia with Ce Suarez Pas as María.

It’s a strange piece full of the sort of weird imagery one associates with South American magical realism and then some. The plot concerns a poor young girl in a very gritty Buenos Aires. She becomes a singer then a prostitute, Then she dies and her ghost wonders the city until she forced to give birth ti a daughter, also María, and so ending her role in the eternal cycle (“Forgotten are you among all women”) that will be carried on by her daughter. Her journeys and her resurrection are directed in some strange way by a spoken word character El Duende (The Goblin). Along the way she meets all kinds of strange people and others; a sparrow, a thief, a psychoanalyst, noodle kneaders, wizard bricklayers and much more. It’s really creepy.

Musically it’s a mixture of numbers for María and a variety of male characters (all sung by Alberto Maria Munafò), passages where The Goblin (Gualtiero Scola) speaks over the orchestra, choral elements, where three male and three female singers play a host of characters, and instrumentals. The music, of course, is based on tango with heavy emphasis on Bandoneon, played here by Cesare Chiacchiaretta, but there’s also electric guitar (Salvatore Russo), a solo violin (Giovanni Zonno) and two pianos (Nico Fuscaldo and Filippo Arlia). It’s an interesting structure with the very creepy spoken Goblin adding a sinister element.

The performances are very good. Paz is a really good tango singer with a soulful voice that well conveys the empty horror that is María. Munafò has a rather pleasant voice and sings his multiple characters pretty straight. Scola is just creepy enough without being OTT. The solo instrumentalists are all good, especially Chiacchiaretta, and so is the orchestra.

The recording was made at Colonia San Benedetto in Cetraro in 2021 and it’s good. The singers are captured clearly and the balance seems fairly natural. It’s only available as a 2CD physical set or on streaming services.

Definitely worth a listen if you aren’t familiar with this rather strange work. Worth it for Ce Suarez Paz’ worldly and sensuous Marìa if you are familiar.

Catalogue information: Brilliant Classics BRI96762

Offenbach - Robinson Crusoé at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées (TCE) in Paris

Sun, 07 Dec 2025 12:50:00 +0000

Théâtre des Champs Elysées (TCE), Paris, Wednesday December 3 2025

Conductor: Marc Minkowski. Production and Costumes: Laurent Pelly.Sets: Chantal Thomas.Lighting: Michel Le Borgne. Robinson: Sahy Ratia. Edwige: Julie Fuchs. Vendredi: Adèle Charvet. Sir William Crusoé: Laurent Naouri. Toby: Marc Mauillon. Jim-Cocks: Rodolphe Briand. Suzanne: Emma Fekete. Deborah: Julie Pasturaud. Atkins: Matthieu Toulouse. Extras: Dan Azoulay, Antoine Lafon, José-Maria Mantilla, Pascal Oumakhlouf. Les Musiciens du Louvre, accentus choir.

Photos: Vincent Pontet

This article will begin with a bit of background chat about Laurent Pelly and Marc Minkowski’s ‘partnership’ over many years, and as it’s a rarity, about Robinson Crusoé. This can just be skipped if you aren’t interested.

Many of us have been grateful over the years for all the pleasure, the sheer enjoyment brought to us by the Pelly-Minkowski ‘duo’, starting more than two decades ago with memorable productions - live, on disc and DVD - of Offenbach standards ‘including but not limited to,’ as the lawyers say, La Belle Hélène and La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, both with Dame Felicity Lott, and Orphée aux Enfers with Natalie Dessay. They were also jointly responsible for establishing Rameau’s Platée, and thereby Rameau himself, as a repertoire classic at the Paris Opera. The last collaboration of theirs that I witnessed was La Périchole, also at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées (TCE) three years ago, as it happens with Stanislas de Barbeyrac - most recently Siegmund at the Bastille - as Piquillo.

Naturally, when the 2025-2026 schedules appeared, Robinson Crusoé, an Offenbach rarity, with Pelly and Minkowski at the helm, was for me one of the most exciting prospects of the new season. To be sure of having good seats, I even went so far as to take out a subscription at the TCE again.

Robinson Crusoé had its premiere in November 1867 at the Opéra Comique, one of Paris’s imperial theatres. The stakes were high. The joke had been made that even Boston or Rio were within easier reach for Offenbach than ‘Favart’ (i.e. than the Opéra Comique, housed in the Salle Favart). His first foray there, in 1860, an opéra bouffe called Barkouf, was a flop, running for only half-a-dozen performances. This was presumably because Barkouf was, indeed, an opéra bouffe, not the generally more sedate Opéra Comique fare. In it, after the inhabitants of Lahore have defenestrated their Kaymakan, the Great Mogul, to bring them to their senses, sends them instead a dog, which bites anyone who comes near. But as you might expect, the dog turns out to be a paragon of wise stewardship: the Punjab was never so well governed, to the fury of the old guard. I’d love to see Barkouf, but Favart’s patrons felt they were being taken for a ride.

So for his 1867 return to the prestige house with Robinson Crusoé, Offenbach pulled out all the stops. He turned, for his text, to Eugène Cormon, stage manager of the Paris Opera (in charge, for example, of Meyerbeer's L’Africaine), and Hector Crémieux, author of a baker’s dozen or more of his librettos, including (with Halévy) Orphée aux enfers. And he assembled a prestige cast. Achille-Félix Montaubry (Robinson) had been Berlioz’s first Bénédict. Marie Cico (Edwige) was an Offenbach regular, having sung in Orphée aux Enfers and Geneviève de Brabant, among others. Célestine Galli-Marié (Vendredi) had just premiered Thomas’s Mignon and would go on to star in Fantasio - and in Bizet’s Carmen.

In the event, the work was neither a smash hit nor - no pun intended - a shipwreck. The press seem to have thought it wavered too ambiguously between the opéra-bouffe and opéra-comique genres. The audience applauded the bouffe numbers at the core of the work most loudly, and some were encored, but they were less enthusiastic about the whole.

The score - object, like the libretto and casting, of Offenbach’s TLC - was criticised for containing ‘too much music,’ a jibe that must have driven many composers crazy over the centuries, Rameau being only the first that comes to my mind. It is strikingly inventive, colourful and sophisticated, surely - so I thought, sitting there - one of Offenbach’s best. Measured reception or not, it was hailed by the more musicologically-focused press as marking a new stage in Offenbach’s development as a composer, confounding those who saw him as ‘condemned to the Bouffes’ (meaning, with its capital ‘B’, the theatre where his bouffe works were usually performed) ‘à perpétuité’ - i.e. for all eternity. Robinson Crusoé ran for a respectable, if not record-breaking, thirty-two performances.

The Franco-Prussian War (1870) played a part in stalling revivals. Perhaps because of the story’s origins and the work’s alleged nod (Wikipedia) to the English pantomime tradition, it reappeared in the 1970s, 80s and 90s in the UK - and once in the US, at the Ohio Light Opera. In France, as far as I know, it was last performed at the Opéra Comique during the 86–87 season, but I’m ready to be corrected. That, at any rate, is the last performance alluded to in French articles and comments.

The plot is outlined in a nutshell on Wikipedia. As we might expect: ‘Crusoé leaves his family in England and runs away to sea. He is marooned on an island with only his friend and helper Vendredi (Man Friday) for company. His fiancée and two family servants come to the island in search of him, and after narrow escapes from cannibals and pirates they seize the pirates' ship and set sail for home.’

My thought, as the performance ended on Monday evening, was that if this relentlessly energetic production doesn’t restore Robinson Crusoé to the repertoire, nothing can hope to. It certainly deserves it - unless, a genuine concern, its period references to savages and cannibalism, and Vendredi’s pidgin English prove too hard to render acceptable. Pelly on stage, Minkowski in the pit, and an outstanding cast all round showed that any potential ‘placidity’ in the first act, or the potential bathos of the ‘glory be’ denouement (quite common, after all, in this genre) can be swept aside by lively directing, vigorous conducting and top-class singing: there’s no chance of the audience’s attention flagging.

The title role of Robinson was originally meant to be sung by Lawrence Brownlee, but apparently the Paris Opera put a contractual kibosh on that. Malagasy tenor Sahy Ratia was brought in to replace him; an equivocal honour, I should imagine, for someone only just starting to make a name for himself. Ratia - born Ratianarinaivo - describes himself as a tenore di grazia or light lyric, in the same vein as Brownlee and Flórez. He has, I read, recently triumphed in Satyagraha and as Nadir. Born in 1991, he isn’t quite as young as he looks, but his voice is undeniably youthful, even a touch ‘green,’ though firm and well projected, and he oozes youthful charm. Perfect for Robinson. It will be interesting, one day, to hear him in Rossini.

Julie Fuchs was absolutely époustouflante (breathtaking), above all in the show’s central showpiece, the mad Valse d’Edwige, ‘Conduisez-moi vers celui que j'adore’, that some will know from recordings by Joan Sutherland, Natalie Dessay or, with a special sparkle, the late Jodie Devos. Hitching up her (until then demure) pencil skirt and leaning into the audience as if to challenge us, with her eyes askew and a tousled mane of blond hair tossed to one side, she brilliantly channelled Brigitte Bardot in her 60s heyday. Gobsmackingly charismatic, but still, in the midst of the whirlwind hysteria, fascinatingly nuanced, tossing off deceptively easy-sounding messe di voce (supposing messe is indeed the plural of messa). We tottered out for interval drinks in a trance.

As Vendredi, Adèle Charvet was unfortunately announced sick (a stand-in had sung from the pit at the dress rehearsal) but willing to go ahead, and did a commendable job, singing with undeniable elegance, if not constant force.

Laurent Naouri is a veteran of these Pelly-Minkowski collaborations, and was totally at ease - and remarkably sonorous, without resorting to barking - as Robinson’s father, Sir William. He was ably partnered, both in song - with a deep, plummy, velvety sound - and their perky dance routines by Julie Pasturaud (Deborah).

As Toby, Marc Mauillon, the brilliant haute-contre Mercury in last year’s ‘Olympic Games’ production of Les Fêtes d’Hébé, was better-directed here than by Sellars in Castor et Pollux, a few months later, in which, as I wrote at the time, he ‘had his baritone hat on.' Yes, unusually, he does both. Here, he was a tenor again, and in true mid-season form, throwing himself with gusto - and precision timing - into the comic business while singing accurately, percussively, and with excellent diction. He was partnered equally ably (as Naouri by Julie Pasturaud) by the lively Emma Fekete (Suzanne), a glittering light soprano from Quebec, new to me, but one I imagine we’ll see more of in Paris after this success at the TCE.

Rodolphe Briand, who describes himself as a ‘singer who acts and an actor who sings’, was just the right character tenor for the crafty Jim Cocks. The third-act contribution, as Atkins, of young bass Matthieu Toulouse was frustratingly brief. He has well-projected presence and it would be interesting to find out more about what he’s capable of in future.

Pelly gave the chorus a lot to think about (see below), which may explain that, while they certainly stayed together, they made less noise than their numbers led you to expect.

Marc Minkowski's conducting was characteristically zingy and invigorating - ‘brutal,' a friend of mine who can't stand him would say. At times, as he whips the score into a frenzy, his baton might be a riding crop. But this has the advantage, along with Pelly’s lively, sometimes corny stage business, of ensuring potential drops in voltage in the opening and closing scenes never become actual. The orchestra was not, on opening night, note-perfect, but compensated by bowing, blowing and banging away with infectious, if percussion-heavy abandon.

Laurent Pelly’s production is simpler than his La Belle Hélène or La Grande Duchesse - whether for artistic or economic reasons, I don’t know, but it makes no odds. It’s no less tightly directed, with nearly every move - some so tiny that if you blink, you miss them - timed to fit the score. By shifting the action northwards, it attempts to elude potential colonial-era issues.

It opens with the Crusoe household in their homely, slightly threadbare flat, set (probably in a deliberate nod to Robinson’s fate and suggesting that an English suburban villa is as much a desert island as any other) on a kind of rotating islet, with its rooms arranged around a central axis of doorways and lamps. Deliberately cheesy but good-humoured dance routines help keep things lively.

Robinson, fresh-faced and clean-shaven in a dapper tailored weskit, sets off to get rich in the Americas. We soon find him, with Vendredi, long-haired, bearded and tattered, scraping by in a migrant tent city surrounded by corporate skyscrapers, somewhere in the US. Florida maybe, as there are palm trees. While Jim Cocks explains, in his Rondeau, how he saved his own skin by introducing the locals to the delights of pot-au-feu, the staff of his gleaming fast-food emporium, in the shadow of the word ‘EAT’ in giant red letters, trundle in cartloads of human parts and hack frantically at the joints on a stainless-steel conveyor. Their uniforms are red shirts with a little yellow logo: golden arches inverted into a curvy ‘W’.

The press, faster off the mark than I am, have mostly skirted round the central gag of the evening, not wanting to spoil the surprise; but I think that, by now, I can spill the beans. The man-eaters leering and grasping at the ‘white goddess’ Edwige, still in her prim pencil skirt and blouse but now, drugged, throwing caution to the winds, are none other - all of them - than POTUS in person. The whole manically-grinning chorus, male and female, tall or short, skinny or portly, in yellow wigs, orange make-up and sunglasses, sport the infamous royal-blue suit and red tie, and do the infamous ‘YMCA’ victory dance. It’s big and crude, but a (blatant) crowd-pleaser. As I wrote above, Julie Fuchs’s gobsmackingly charismatic performance of Edwige’s showpiece waltz, surrounded by all these Trumps, was one of the evening’s highlights.

The ‘pirates’, in Castro- or Guevara-style fatigues and caps, are perhaps meant to be Caribbean guerillas of any kind. Not quite working that out didn’t spoil my enjoyment. At the very end, just before the curtain, in a neat twist, Robinson is left alone on stage, sitting under a single palm. Perhaps it was all a dream.

The whole evening was, to me, like a return to those good ‘old’ days at the turn of the present century I reminisced about at the start of this post. Now, if only Pelly and Minkowski could be persuaded to cast Mauillon (or perhaps Ratia) and Julie Fuchs in Les Mamelles de Tirésias…

Note: an edited version of this post may be published on Parterre.com.

Disappointing Dido and Aeneas from Versailles

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 18:07:25 +0000

The latest video recording of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is from Versailles. It’s a 2024 recording using the same production, by Cecille Roussat and Julien Lubek, as the 2014 Rouen recording and, like that one, there’s a lot of additional instrumental/dance music consistent with the idea that the piece was conceived as a court entertainment in the French style. There’s not much point in repeating what I said back then about the production. Check out the earlier review.

This is though a totally different cast with Sonya Yoncheva as Dido and Halidou Nombre as Aeneas, backed up by Sarah Charles as Belinda. These days Yoncheva is singing roles like Tosca and Norma and, to my ears, she sounds too big and fruity, with rather too much vibrato, for Dido although she hasn’t forgotten how to ornament baroque music stylishly. The bigger problem for me though is that it’s pretty clear they didn’t use an English diction coach. Across the cast there are some really strange vowel sounds! It’s way worse in that regard than the Rouen recording.

The band and chorus (the forces of l’Opéra Royal) though are excellent and I rather liked Stefan Plewniak’s conducting though “Ah Belinda” was really slow. The dancers and aerialists are good too. Video direction, by Julien Condemine is a bit fussy and gimmicky.

One advantage this has though is that there’s a Blu-ray. It’s a typical Château de Versailles Spectacles release with both DVD and Blu-ray in the same box with a booklet. The Blu-ray is technically quite good with a very decent picture and 48kHz/24bit stereo sound but there’s no surround track. The DVD has a Dolby 2.0 stereo track only. Very 1990s. The booklet has much the same material as in the Rouen recording.

Honestly, if you want the tragédie lyrique vibe, the Rouen recording has better singing. If you want a proper Blu-ray recoding with excellent singing and interesting production values the 2009 Royal Opera House recording with Sarah Connolly and the 2008 Paris recording with Malena Ernman are way better (even if you don’t buy Deborah Warner’s take on the girls’ school schtick).

Catalogue information: Château de Versailles Spectacles CVS188

Pressburger and Powell’s The Tales of Hoffmann

Fri, 05 Dec 2025 12:44:55 +0000

So the other Pressburger and Powell film that I recently acquired is their 1951 version of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. There have been claims that this is the first film made of asn opera as opposed to a film of an opera performance but, assuming one accepts that Die Dreigroschenoper is an opera then that prize surely goes to the 1931 Pabst film.

In any event the film of Hoffmann is very different from a live performance. For starters the only singers who appear are American tenor Robert Rounseville as Hoffmann and American soprano Ann Ayars as Antonia. All the other characters are played (in fact danced) by members of the Royal Ballet with the singing, by an assortment of the London based singers of the day, dubbed in. It’s an intriguing concept and they go whole hog with it. There are serious names from the dance world involved. The choreography is by Freddie Ashton (who also plays Cochenille), Stella and Olympia are played by Moira Shearer and Giulietta by Ludmilla Tcherina. The orchestra is the Royal Philharmonic with Thomas Beecham conducting. It was filmed in Technicolor and got a cinema release. How times have changed!

The aesthetic of the film is interesting. It gets a sort of Regency setting and some elements are very grand. The Antonia act for instance seems to set in a very large and elaborate clifftop villa, a bit like a Greek temple, and there are some carefully composed shots suggesting that Antonia is suspended between this world and the next that are very reminiscent of A Matter of Life and Death.

There are, of course, lots of cuts. The Muse of Poetry is gone completely, Nicklaus’ role is considerably shortened and the Giulietta act seems heavily cut. Generally the Lindorf villains are rather downplayed except in the Antonia act. (The acts are presented Olympia, Giulietta, Antonia). This makes room for an introductory dance number in the prologue featuring a body suited Stella/Shearer in the The Enchanted Dragonfly while still keeping the film down to about two and a quarter hours.

The singing is mostly pretty good. It’s in English and the translation is fine. Rounseville has a rather pleasant tenor. He’s not Juan Diego Flórez but he’s pretty good and he’s a good actor and, importantly, a good mover. Bruce Dargavel makes the most of what’s left of the villains with a pretty good stage performance by Robert Helpmann. Dorothy Bond sings Olympia with excellent, precise coloratura. Margharita Grandi is quite good as Giulietta with a very decent Barcarolle though the singing, is to my taste, a touch overwrought which is probably more a case of the preferred style of the period than anything else. Least successful vocally for me was Ann Ayars as Antonia. She has her moments but stylistically she is very much of the time with rather exaggerated diction. She acts well though.

It’s the dancing that stands out though, especially Shearer. The Enchanted Dragonfly is a real test piece requiring great precision and athleticism and looks real quite modern. She’s also excellent as a suitably robotic Olympia. Tcherina totally looks the part as Giulietta and glides sultrily through her act which includes a rather louche party, going on orgy. The chorus are all dancers too and act as a corps de ballet portraying drinking students, marionettes at Olympia’s, orgy guests in Giulietta and dancing couples in the finale. There are nearly forty dancers and singers, excluding chorus, credited so it’s just not possible to do them all justice.

There are lots of surreal moments along the way. Clocks come to life at Luther’s. The dismemberment of Olympia certainly couldn’t be managed on stage and there’s cool stuff with mirrors and gondolas in Giulietta as well as the otherwordly stuff in Antonia. Even the credits sequence is rather cool. In short, it’s classic Powell and Pressburger.

The restoration for Blu-ray release (Scorses and the BFI again) is just excellent and it’s readily available as part of the Criterion Collection. The picture is super detailed and the colours vivid. The stereo sound is good early 1950s stereo. This is enjoyable to watch as well as being an important milestone in the history of opera on film.

Catalogue information: Criterion Collection Blu-ray UPC 715515272810

Opera 5’s 2026 Toronto Opera Festival

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 14:29:07 +0000

Following on from this year’s successful festival at Theatre Passe Muraille Opera 5 are once again running a sort of mini festival at that venue in June next year. There will be two programmes. There’s a Puccini double bill of Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi which, I’m guessing will be given with chamber ensemble accompaniment. Rachel Krehm headlines as the theologically unsound nun while Gianni Schicchi has Greg Dahl in the title role. Krisztina Szabó will appear in both operas as Princess Zia and Zita. Jessica Derventzis directs and Evan Mitchell is in charge of matters musical. This one runs June 3rd to 7th.

The second piece is the world premiere of a work by Cecilia Livingston and Duncan McFarlane. It’s called Parélios and it’s starting point is Olafur Eliasson’s installation The Weather Project. It’s not the first piece Livingston and McFarlane have created based on visual art. They also collaborated on mark; a piece inspired by Houston’s Rothko Chapel and other paintings. The new work will combine elements of opera, oratorio, dance and video installation. It will be choreographed by Jenn Nicholls and conducted by Evan Mitchell with soloists, a choir, dancers and TorQ Percussion Quartet. The themes explored are climate change, migration, and humanity’s connection to the planet; the issues that really matter right now. This one runs June 11th to 14th.

The internship programme in conjunction with McGill will also continue. Besides providing understudy opportunities there will be an RBA lunchtime concert by the interns on May 4th as well as one by the festival cast on May 13th.

Michael Powell directs Herzog Blaubarts Burg

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 12:56:46 +0000

I recently got my hands on restored versions of two Powell and Pressburger opera films. The first is a film of Bartók’s Herzog Blaubarts Burg broadcast on Süddeutscher Rundfunk in 1963. It’s directed by Powell alone I think. The current version was restored by the BFI from an original Eastmancolor negative in their archives and a sound master on magnetic tape from SDR under the supervision of Martin Scorsese and Powell’s widow Thelma Schoonmaker. It was subsequently released on Blu-ray by BFI in 2023 but currently seems very hard to find! It doesn’t help that the BFI on-line shop is currently off-line!

It’s sung in German of course. This is a TV broadcast from an era when pretty much all opera in Germany was sung in German and, as it happens, the German version of the work was more common in non-German speaking countries than the original Hungarian. There are English subtitles and even a sung English translation but that sounded so weird I quickly switched to German.

The style of the film is a sort of cross between expressionism and 1960s sci-fi/fantasy. There were points where it reminded me a bit of Barbarella; Queen of the Galaxy or even Logan’s Run. But really it’s unique and it’s very beautiful. The various rooms get strangely abstract designs and the lighting adds strange colours; often blood red unsurprisingly but also greens and yellows. Both characters’ costumes change frequently too and Judith gets jewellery in the same sort of spiky abstract as much of the sets.

Musically and dramatically it’s excellent. Unusually for the period the singers are also the actors. Blaubart is a menacing looking Norman Foster; a notable bass-baritone of the period, and Judith is played by the excellent and very sexy (in a feral kind of way) Uruguayan mezzo Ana Raquel Satre. The orchestra is the Zagreb Philharmonic with Milan Horvath conducting. The orchestral playing is very detailed but not as dramatic as one might expect. I think that’s partly a function of the recording technology but also because the voices are balanced well forward, which is what one might expect in a film, but it does tend to background the orchestra a bit.

The restoration is astonishing. The picture is really good (it’s 4:3 aspect ratio of course) and there is very decent stereo sound and crisp subtitles.

If you can find a copy of this it’s well worth seeing whether you are a Michael Powell fan or just interested in a different take on the opera.

Catalogue information: At present a mystery!

Microtonal music for string quartet

Tue, 02 Dec 2025 12:42:21 +0000

The first release from new record label Mnémosyne Records contains three microtonal pieces for string quartet by young Montreal based composers played by Quatuor Mémoire; Bailey Wantuch and Meggie Lacombe (violins), Marilou Lepage (viola) and Audréanne Filion (cello).

The first piece is by Florence M. Tremblay and is titled Insides. It’s slightly under twelve minutes and uses a fairly wide range of sonorities without, I think, going into any of the weirder types of extended technique. Most of what I was hearing hear were a drone like ground at varying pitch and volume on which more solid segments of both bowed and plucked notes were superimposed. The dynamics are quite complex and one section even sounded weirdly like what you hear inside a plane when it’s taking off. Plenty there to maintain interest across a fairly short piece.

Louis-Michel Tougas’ Quatuor à cordes no.2 is just a little bit longer. There’s more extended technique here with (I think) bowing on the bridge (or some other means of producing scraping sounds) and striking the body of the instrument. But these busier, more insistent sounds are only occasional visitors to a soundscape that’s basically quite gentle with extended quarter tones layered over each other and a real sense of a conversation between the instruments. It’s surprising lyrical.

The most substantial piece is Olivier St-Pierre’s Chronos, Kaïros et Aiôn which gives its name to the album. This piece is over thirty minutes long and simultaneously explores the three concepts of time mentioned in the title. Chronos; objective, immutable, and cyclical time, Kairos; the time of opportunity, and Aion; the time of eternity, inspire gestural figures which interact in complex ways and reoccur in different combinations against a generally drone-like backdrop. There’s lots of extended technique and sharp changes in dynamics. It feels quite sparse in texture with often only one or two instruments playing. I can see why the composer needed this long to explore some pretty complex ideas but whether the average listener will be able listen actively for so long is, I think, questionable.

This has to be really difficult music to play so full credit to the young musicians of Quatuor Mémoire for performing it so skilfully on this, their debut album. The recordings were made at Église Saint-Alexandre, Québec in late 2024 and 2025. Louis-Michel Tougas was responsible for recording, mixing and editing and the end result is a sonically impressive recording. It’s being released as a physical CD and digitally in lossless 44.1kHz/24bit format and MP3. The release date is December 12th but it’s available for pre-order on Bandcamp.

Catalogue information: Mnémosyne Records MN001

Exemplary Tales of Hoffmann from the Royal Opera

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 12:33:54 +0000

Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann is a rather difficult opera to stage. There’s no definitive performing edition and there’s a lot of (too much?) material to work with so decisions have to be made about what to cut. There’s also the fundamental problem of how to frame the stories of Hoffman’s three great loves as he’s supposed to be recounting them in a bar, while drunk, some years after the events described. Plus, there is some sense that all three are really just projections of his current infatuation; the opera singer Stella.

Damiano Michieletto’s solution, in the production recorded at Covent Garden in 2024, is to make the three key acts take place at different points in Hoffmann’s life as looked back on by him in, essentially, old age. So, the Olympia act is staged in a schoolroom with a schoolboy Hoffmann crushing naively on schoolgirl/robot Olympia with Spalanzi trying to keep some kkind of order in an unruly class provided by the chorus. Most of the plot about Spalanzani bilking Coppélius is cut leaving the focus firmly on Hoffmann and Olympia. This sort of simplification is repeated in the other acts.

For Antonia we have young (but adult) Hoffmann fixated on the love of his life who is here portrayed as a dancer rather than a singer. I’m going to come back to the use of dance in the production but here it’s especially important. We see young girl Antonia danced by a young girl while adult Antonia hobbles around on crutches. Only under the influence of Dr. Miracle does she recover the ability to walk and it kills her. Meanwhile we see young Antonia dancing with an adult ballerina who is, one supposes, her mother.

The Giulietta act is set at an expensive party. Everyone is in evening dress. Hoffmann is clearly bored of “love” at this point and it’s pretty clear that his relationship with the courtesan is transactional. “Courtesan nature” is pretty well presented here and it definitely made me think of Socrates visit to Theodote in Xenophon’s Memorabilia. There’s some very neat staging for the capture of Hoffmann’s reflection but the cuts made here means there’s no explanation of how he gets it back. No fight, no nothing.

The presentation of Stella, the Muse of Poetry and Nicklausse is also interesting. They are three distinct characters though Stella’s part is reduced to almost nothing, especially since in the Epilogue she’s actually replaced by Lindorf dressed as her. The Muse though gets a big role. Prominent, in fact, in all five acts. She’s costumed as the Green Fairy because, at least in the Prologue, absinthe is Hoffmann’s drink of choice. Nicklausse is a parrot with Julie Boulianne in a sort of parrot outfit carrying a large stuffed parrot around. This may at this stage sound a bit complicated and confusing but I found it had the opposite effect. The story telling is very clear with the focus on Hoffmann and his loves and some of the more extraneous elements eliminated. Creating a distinct character for the Muse also simplified matters.

So to dance. The use of dance in this production is extensive and very high quality. There are two recurrent themes; the Green Fairies and the Devils. I think they intervene in every act including Prologue and Epilogue; emphasising Hoffmann’s relationship with drink and Lindorf etc’s identification with Satan. There are multiple Olympias dancing in Olympia’s act. There are classical ballet dancers; young and old, in Antonia and showgirls in Giulietta. There’s also a very impressive stilt walker. The standard of the choreography (Chiara Vecchi) and the dance performance is really high. I think the only other house I’ve seen integrate dance into an opera so effectively is Paris.

All of this is backed up by really strong performances by the principals. Juan Diego Flórez is Hoffmann and one gets the feeling that this is a role he’s been waiting to play. He still has thrilling high notes but he’s matured as an actor and creates a distinct Hoffmann for each act here. It’s impressive. Olympia is Olga Pudova and she’s perfect. Her coloratura is brilliant and her robotic acting (maintained at curtain call) is rather wonderful. Ermonela Jaho, as Antonia, does what she does best, which is rip your heartstrings out. Does any singer do “vulnerability” as well as she does while singing with exemplary choice of colour and dynamics? Marina Costa-Jackson is a suitably sultry Giulietta with some darker colours to distinguish her from the other two.

There’s a very playful performance by Christine Rice as the Muse. It’s sort of like Puck had joined the WI. Julie Boulianne actually does rather well as a parrot! She’s also musically very good in her big numbers like the Barcarolle duet.Then there’s Alex Esposito as Lindorf and his avatars. He is splendidly creepy. He’s not quite as “fire and brimstone” as some playing this role but I really liked the somewhat more subtle approach. The myriad of other roles are also done very well. Antonella Manacorda conducts. He goes for “grand” and gets it. The orchestra and chorus respond extremely well and the overall sound is both dramatic and impressive.

Video direction is by Rhodri Huw and he does a good job of capturing a set that often has multiple elements in play at the same time. Picture quality is the usual high Blu-ray quality and sound is maybe a bit better than most releases (which may be contributing to how good the orchestra sounds). The stereo track is 96kHz/24bit and you can notice a teeny bit more detail and solidity than usual. The surround track is equally good and presumably was mixed from equally hi-res sources.

ONP Bastille, Paris, Monday November 24 2025

Conductor: Pablo Heras-Casado. Production: Calixto Bieito. Sets: Rebecca Ringst. Costumes: Ingo Krügler. Lighting: Michael Bauer. Video: Sarah Derendinger. Siegmund: Stanislas de Barbeyrac. Wotan: James Rutherford. Hunding: Günther Groissböck. Sieglinde: Elza van den Heever. Brünnhilde: Tamara Wilson. Fricka: Eve-Maud Hubeaux. Gerhilde: Louise Foor. Ortlinde: Laura Wilde. Waltraute: Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur. Schwertleite: Katharina Magiera. Helmwige: Jessica Faselt. Siegrune: Ida Aldrian. Grimgerde: Marvic Monreal. Rossweisse: Marie-Luise Dreßen. Orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris. E-doggy robot dog by Evotech.

Photos: ONP/Herwig Prammer

What is it Anna Russell says, in her famous analysis of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelungs? ‘So Wotan knows the curse is working.’ It certainly seems to be working on Calixto Bieito’s Ring in Paris. Das Rheingold, earlier this year, fielded four-and-a-half to five different Wotans: Iain Paterson (replacing Ludovic Tézier, who pulled out well in advance), Brian Mulligan (from the wings, once he was no longer needed as Alberich), Nicholas (not Lawrence, as the Opéra’s site claimed till corrected) Brownlee, John Lundgren and Derek Welton. In the present Die Walküre, Paterson was first replaced by Christopher Maltman, then James Rutherford, then Maltman again to finish the run. Though he’s still slated to appear in next year’s complete cycle, not once did Paterson show up and sing. All this chopping and changing - and the rowdy reception the production initially got - must have shaken the performers up a bit, yet the success of this Vache-qui-rit was firmly on the musical side.

We’re getting used, these days, to a lighter, more lyrical approach to Wagner’s cycle. You might say, with the vocal types available today, this is making a virtue of necessity. But in Brussels last year, it was a deliberate move, by Romeo Castellucci and Alain Altinoglu in tandem, to ‘desacralise’ or ‘de-monumentalise’ the Ring, if you see what I mean, and present it on a deeply human scale. If we look at his catalogue, we see Pablo Heras-Casado has recorded a lot of Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann; as it happens, without having consulted that list, in my post about February’s Das Rheingold I wrote that his Wagner seemed ‘pitched modestly somewhere between Mendelssohn and Schumann in weight.’ Stanislas de Barbeyrac, meanwhile, comes to Siegmund via Gluck, Mozart and Weber, a logical enough progression. And though Tamara Wilson has certainly sung ‘heavy’ roles, the only time I’ve personally seen her before (not having seen her Turandot here) was in Bellini, as Beatrice di Tenda, in Peter Sellars’ flaccid production of the opera of that name.

Well, neither Barbeyrac, Elza van den Heever (Sieglinde) nor Tamara Wilson (Brünnhilde) showed much sign of being shaken by the ruckus described at the start of this post. They were the stars of the evening.

Barbeyrac has already recorded Schubert Lieder accompanied by an orchestra. His performance on Monday night was a lesson in masterful but measured Lieder-singing: vocally young and fresh, with a warm, grainy timbre, attention to the text, near-infinite nuance… none of which stopped him acting his socks off, or galvanising what had till then been a slightly dozy first act with an impressively long and resounding ‘Wälse! Wälse!’ It was all, in sum, scrumptious. My neighbour was entranced.

I suppose it’s understandable if singers pace themselves cautiously in a work of this size, but from that ‘Wälse! Wälse’ onwards, the evening got better and better. I could perhaps see for the first time, as I hadn’t before, why some people are doubtful about Elza van den Heever. Bieito has Sieglinde cowed and bruised and, once pregnant, forever doubled-up on the floor with cramps (Brünnhilde’s third-act revelation of her sister’s condition is surely superfluous); so she often sang with what was perhaps too thin and raspy a thread of voice. But in the last act, when, I guess, they all felt they could finally let rip, she came into her own with a magnificent ‘O hehrstes Wunder! Herrlichste Maid!’ - showing perhaps that she’s better singing high and loud than low and soft.

Regarding Tamara Wilson, I can simply copy and paste what I wrote after Beatrice di Tenda: ‘It's rare to hear a voice that, without any sense of being a 'sledgehammer', (...) quietly but firmly fills the Bastille with beautiful, silvery sound, both rhythmically precise and perfectly tuned.’ What I learned in addition this Monday was that she has firmly sustained medium and lower ranges, put to good use when announcing defeat to Siegmund and, later, pleading with her dad; and that she is a lively actress. Here, Brünnhilde is at first played girlishly and submissively, so Wilson - again, no doubt, saving herself for later - was initially a bit frugal with the ‘money notes’. But by the last act (having, in the second, swapped her skittishness for butchness, and her blue crinoline for black cargo pants and tee-shirt, leather wristbands and army boots) she is another, self-assertive Brünnhilde, stomping around and even pummelling Wotan’s back as he cowers on the ground. On Monday, towards the end Wilson was very nearly, I thought, in what people call ‘a zone’, a phenomenon I hadn’t come across in an opera house (or anywhere else) for quite a while. Her long crescendo on ‘Liebe’ in ‘Der diese Liebe mir in's Herz gehaucht’ was one of the highlights of the evening.

After Das Rheingold, I wrote: ‘Eve-Maud Hubeaux played Fricka with her usual imperious presence and charisma, but I still think (...) that the Bastille (...) reduces her impact and authority…’ Now, in Die Walküre, her vocal impact and authority matched her presence and charisma, so perhaps in February I was wrong. Already, as La Grande Vestale last year, she’d been costumed more or less as Disney’s Queen Grimhilde, the evil stepmother in Snow White. Here, an icy platinum blonde with plasters still stuck on her newly-remodelled cheeks, she stormed in to browbeat Wotan in much the same bitch-cape, only now dyed turquoise, with matching elbow-length gloves.

In the circumstances (how much rehearsal time did any of these revolving Wotans get?) while James Rutherford was a solid enough - and musical - Wotan, his soft-timbred voice was short on projection and percussiveness at the top. Anyway, the blue velvet dressing-gown and rubber boots he wore all evening stripped him of any real authority or dignity: this was a fretful, dithering Wotan, pushed around by his wife and increasingly independent and rebellious daughter.

Günther Groissböck‘s voice, as Hunding, to me sounded fleshless and dry, and his characterisation was (literally and figuratively) distant. I can’t say I heard the ‘straightforward vocal health’ of his 2018 Gurnemanz in the same house, but then it wasn’t fair of Bieto, acoustically speaking, to position Hunding’s tatty flat high up on the right in a letter-box (more of which in a moment), and keep him there.

The Valkyries - the eight of them, that is, not abseiling down the façade of the Valhalla data-centre - were, singing through openings at various levels of the set, though physically apart, unusually together. And there were clearly some interesting individual voices among them, only I don’t know which is which well enough to say who was who.

Pablo Heras‑Casado’s conducting hasn’t changed much since I wrote it was ‘transparent and analytical, almost matter-of-fact - not to say prosaic and dry.’ The opening storm, for example, was just that: fast but flat-footed, short of colour and contrasts, ebb-and-flow; and when the brass came in, they lacked fire-power. (As usual with French brass, I might have added, had I been in a particularly prickly mood. Later, we would hear the usual cracked notes.) The quiet, lyrical, contemplative passages were more successful - thanks partly to some memorable oboe-playing - than the more grandiloquent outbursts in the score. One sharp critic (on ConcertoNet) summed things up catchily: Heras‑Casado ‘n’a pas la tête épique’ - isn’t epic-minded (it sounds catchier in French). ‘Nothing stands out (...) and above all the drama disappears.’ You aren’t swept off your seat when you most want to be: in the rolling orchestral flourishes and surging chords leading up to Wotan’s ‘Leb’ wohl, du kühnes, herrliches Kind!’ for example. The conductor refuses to sink to ‘milking’ these moments, and we’re left frustrated. The reviewer in French daily Le Figaro let slip that Heras‑Casado now knows he will not be the Paris Opera’s next music director. Perhaps that’s as well.

Bieito’s production is disappointing. The expectations raised in Das Rheingold, of a spectacular focus on the impact of ‘post-body’ or ‘post-human’ developments and the like seem to have fizzled out and reverted to that Regie classic, the post-nuclear surveillance state. But perhaps they’re meant to have. In the Ring prologue, Alberich and Mime mined their data in an underground lab ‘cluttered with work benches, wiring, plastic body parts, masks, servers twinkling in cages and monitors ablaze with DayGlo colours…’ (my quotes) and fashioned ‘a humanoid - played mesmerisingly by a dancer in a second skin - in slender, female form, a partner, we guess, for loveless Alberich.’ Now, in Die Walküre, Wotan’s spartan meeting room is lined with tall cabinets connected to great, vertical swatches of red and black cables that, in his frustration, he tears down in a splutter of sparks. But when he slides the cabinets open, instead of humming servers they contain only rows of distinctly old-school, analog box-files: an archive of all his children, or all his heroes? And instead of more of those startlingly lifelike humanoids, all he has now is a robot dog, an expensive toy, chasing juvenile Brünnhilde round on her hobby-horse. Has his dream of big-data dominion already come to this?

But by jumping to act two, I’ve jumped the gun. The production overall relies so much on the set (huge and immobile), videos and lighting that the directing as such, not Bieito at his best, comes across as almost incidental, as if he’d said to his production team, ‘I’ve had it, you deal with it.’ The single set is a steel mesh cage so big it fills the Bastille’s stage from side to side and top to bottom, leaving a relatively narrow strip for acting and singing on the stage apron - not such a bad thing at the Bastille. Through the mesh we can sometimes make out steel stairs rising through several floors, and the odd light fitting, never switched on, familiar from February. Like the Valhalla cube in Das Rheingold, you expect this giant contraption to do more than it actually does until the end.

During the storm, security-camera images projected all over the metal facade catch Siegmund battling in terror up the bare stairwells in a gas-mask, with an oxygen-tank on his back. A wide window opens up in the wall, on the right, revealing Hunding’s tatty flat, with its war-torn curtains and sickly-looking potted tree. (The ash Nothung is wrenched from must be the wooden floor of the stage, as that’s where the sword, shortly after, magically appears. Unless it springs from Siegfried’s belly, where he displays a big, red birthmark, implying perhaps that he and his sister had been conjoined twins.) As Siegmund tumbles in, Sieglinde grabs a machine-gun and trains it on him. All the action is captured live by cameras in the corners and blown up into shadowy, expressionistic projections on the steel mesh. Hunding arrives, dragging a slaughtered ram. Instead of sleeping, he undresses, changes into uniform, and, seated on a chair, power naps, - dreaming, perhaps, of being a Führer - while the twins bed down in an unsettlingly grubby sleeping-bag below. There’s little sign of spring, on stage or in the pit. In fury, Hunding guts the ram.

Act two’s opening projections are rainbow-hued thermal camera images, in slow motion, of long-fanged hounds at the chase. The letter-box opening in the mesh façade is now bottom left: Wotan’s office-cum-meeting room, as shabby as Hunding’s flat, similary fitted with security cameras. Brünnhilde capers in girlishly astride her hobby-horse and is pursued by the robot dog, egged on by Wotan. Fricka strides in, tall, straight as a die, and forces Wotan to snap his lance into sections. Wotan’s eventual orders spark off Brünnhilde’s rapid change in attitude, marked by her change of clothes. Having determined to save Siegmund, she plants a smacker on his mouth: the ambiguity of her relationship with her father also extends to her dealings with the young man. In this production, Wotan himself steps in to kill Siegmund - with the sword.

The final act opens with a dazzling, rapid-fire, kaleidoscopic mosaic, on the façade, of images alluding to future technologies, but as portrayed in old newsreels, press photos, and war and and science-fiction films, including Apocalypse Now (the helicopters: fancy that!) and Creature from the Black Lagoon. The Walkyries wear vaguely futuristic black jumpsuits, somewhere between riot gear and frogmen’s suits. Like the gimmicky robot dog (booed loudly when it returned: ‘à la poubelle’ - bin it! - someone shouted from upstairs) the noisy girls have glowing green eyes that Wotan, when they hide Brünnhilde, plucks out. Brünnhilde emits her magnificent crescendo seated on a ledge. As, having pummelled his back, she pleads with Wotan, he pretends not to listen, instead fishing gas masks out of large, plastic bin-liners, and lines them up meticulously, at the edge of the stage.

Now, those, if any, who pay attention may remember that in February I wrote: ‘Nothing happens’ (with the giant Valhalla cube, I meant) ‘until, at the end, in an orgy of stage smoke and spotlight beams, the façade lowers like a drawbridge, and Wotan and Fricka clamber up a staircase littered with tangled cables.’ Guess what. In Die Walküre, at the end, the set finally budges: the whole gigantic construction slowly separates into tall, iron towers that glide into a half-circle at the rear, and some of the uprights settle at an angle, as if Wotan’s vision is falling apart. There’s no fire, real or on video. But in an orgy of stage smoke and orange spotlight beams (Is it a ring of toxic gas? Would that explain the masks? But with a mask, you think, puzzled, any cowardly pleb could forge through…), Brünnhilde climbs up to a neon-lit eyrie at the top of the central tower and, leaning on the window-ledge, waits for sleep (and of course, in due time, a hero) to come.

Though it leans so heavily on the set, video, lighting (excellent), and gadgetry, there are ideas in this production. But they come in dribs and drabs and remain largely undeveloped, the exception being Brünnhilde’s transformation from obedient child to rebellious warrior. They don’t emerge organically from the story or score, or knit into a coherent whole to form something more satisfying than the sum of the parts. Not an absolute stinker, but a disappointing production that could do with more work - and may get it, as it will be back next year in a ‘festival’ (drinks and snacks included in the price) of the complete Ring - with or without Iain Paterson.

Note: an

Carmen, Royal Academy Opera, 19 November 2025

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 18:19:13 +0000

Susie Sainsbury Theatre, Royal Academy of Music

Images: Craig Fuller

Carmen – Charlotte Clapperton
Don José – Woogyeom Kim
Micaëla – Madeleine Perring
Escamillo – Harrison Robb
Zuniga – Theodore McAlindon
Moralès – Alexander Hopkins
Frasquita – Abigail Sinclair
Mercédès – Amy Porter
Remendado – Joseph Hancock
Dancaire – Joel Robson
Lillas Pastia – Joshua Furtado-Mendes

Director – Harry Fehr
Designs – Yannis Thavoris
Lighting – Jake Wilshire
Video – Matt Powell
Movement – Victoria Newlyn

Royal Academy Opera Chorus

Royal Academy Sinfonia

Christopher White (conductor)

A few rays of Andalusian sun would not go amiss right now in the dark, dismal, last half of November. Short of that, Carmen at the Royal Academy offered an alternative: quite an undertaking even for an enterprising conservatoire opera scheme. Given the ways in which voices develop, ‘big’ nineteenth-century repertoire – the description begs questions, yet still holds – tends to be avoided in student performance. Just as young professional voices tend for the most part to steer away from Verdi and Wagner in favour of Mozart, early music, and some modernist repertoire, so do they from Carmen. One can debate whether that is a good thing. Many factors come into play, not least the desire to gain experience in roles for which they might be asked to audition. It made for a nice surprise, then, when the Royal Academy named Carmen as its end-of-term show, all the more so when given with such confidence by all concerned.

A smaller theatre helped, of course; when does it not? But there was nothing intrinsically small-scale to the performances; rather, they felt suited to the venue. Intimate, perhaps, but only in the sense that the RAM’s Susie Sainsbury Theatre benefits from its size in enabling all to see and hear the performances at relatively close range. Carmen may be an opéra-comique – as we arguably inform ourselves a little too much – but it generally plays to large houses, is performed by large forces, and Bizet was going to write those orchestral recitatives himself anyway for Vienna, death meaning that they instead were composed by his friend Ernest Guiraud. Tragedy need not be large-scale, but this is no piece of froth. Christopher White and the Royal Academy Sinfonia may likewise have been small in scale (strings 4.4.3.3.2) but they did not come across as such, whether in dash, vigour, or a sheen that would have put many a larger (and older) orchestra to shame. White’s pacing of the four acts stressed dramatic immediacy without ever sounding rushed, offering space where needed. This is an opera of the moment, though, and sounded as such.

Don José (Woogweom Kim) and Carmen (Charlotte Clapperton)

As is generally the case, a mixture of orchestral recitative and dialogue was used, wisely cut, given length and the difficulties of speaking as well as singing in French. Just as in a larger house, some found the language more of a challenge than others, but there was some genuine excellence in that respect and nothing too grievous. If French dialogue was not tenor Woogweom Kim’s greatest strength, it came and went, and vocally he truly came into his own in the second act, a Don José of ardour and vulnerability in tandem. Charlotte Clapperton’s Carmen surely revealed a star in the making: growing like her co-star, fully holding the stage as any Carmen must, through voice and dramatic presence. Madeleine Perring’s sweetly sung Micaëla and Harrison Robb’s already dark Escamillo made much of their roles, as indeed did the rest of the cast, including an enterprising, accomplished chorus depleted by seasonal ailments yet never sounding like it.

Harry Fehr’s production updated the action and made the occasional nod to contemporary mores. Micaëla’s bag made it clear she was no fun of bull-fighting, which seemed very much in character. It told the story straightforwardly, highlighting in interesting fashion the crucial role of fate, alternative paths portrayed on video, without distracting from the principal action. Once again, then, an excellent evening of opera at the Royal Academy.

Youthful Experiences: La bohème at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 14:23:45 +0000

Puccini – La bohème

Mimì – Karen Gardeazabal
Rodolfo – Ştefan Pop
Marcello – Vittorio Prato
Musetta – Giuliana Gianfaldoni
Schaunard – Andrea Piazza
Colline – Davide Giangregorio
Benoît / Alcindoro – Nicolò Ceriani

Coro Voci Bianche del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna / Martijn Dendievel.
Stage director – Graham Vick.

Teatro Comunale di Bologna – Comunale Nouveau, Bologna, Italy. Sunday, November 23rd, 2025.

Tonight marked the first night of this revival of the late Graham Vick’s award-winning production of La bohème. The house has cast it from strength, with an exciting young cast of Italian, Mexican and Romanian singers, under the direction of the gifted young Flemish conductor, Martijn Dendievel. It was clear right from the opening measures that this would be an exceptional Bohème. With a cast made up of Italian speakers and speakers of other Latin languages who also speak Italian fluently, there was an immediate sense that this was to be a performance where the text would live. Indeed, it made me reflect that Giacosa and Illica’s libretto is as much of a masterpiece as Puccini’s score, helped by the fact that tonight word, gesture, and music were completely and utterly linked.

Photo: © Andrea Ranzi

The production was revived by Ron Howell, Vick’s life partner, who brought us a deep understanding of Vick’s vision for the staging, working in collaboration with his co-director, Yamal das Irmich – a long-time associate of Vick’s. Vick sets the action very much in the modern day, representing a group of people who fully engage with each other. Each act has a distinct set, whether a student apartment with an ACDC poster in the first act, a bustling street with a sidewalk café in the second, or the Barrière de l’enfer staged as a grim suburb where a sketchy bar coincides with a men’s cruising ground – complete with violently simulated fellatio. In the final act, the first act apartment returns, shorn of its furniture, as if the students had given up on their bohemian life and were returning to perhaps a more bourgeois existence. In that respect, it felt that Vick takes us on a journey, taking us from the poor yet happy student days, to the fact that in the second half of the evening, those promises of happiness lead to a grimness and grittiness that lie beneath the surface. There’s a sense here that he’s telling us that happiness is fleeting, that life is grey and dangerous, and that relationships are transient. The first two acts are just as uplifting as they should be, the on-stage band dressed up as Santa Claus was a delightfully festive touch, and the stage bustling with activity most definitely raised the spirits. And yet, I did leave the theatre rather disturbed by the final tableau. There, Vick has Mimì left prone, expired alone and covered by a sheet, while the bohemians escape, possibly returning to that former bourgeois life, while Musetta grabs money that Colline had left on the table from selling his coat. I found it a confusing, even troubling, image. Perhaps here, Vick is attempting to say that the Bohemians lacked the maturity to cope with Mimì’s demise. Yet it left me with an unresolved sense and questioning of what the motivations of these people were, and stood in direct opposition to the wonder of those first two acts.

Photo: © Andrea Ranzi

That said, throughout the evening the personenregie was detailed and intricate. That first encounter between Rodolfo and Mimì was wonderfully vivid. It was clear that that they had both pre-planned the encounter, the blowing out of the candles representing two people who wanted to give this meeting every possible chance of success. What also struck me in Vick’s direction, as realized by Howell and Imrich, is how geeky, almost awkward, Rodolfo was in his first interaction with Mimì, and how innocent and charming she was in her reaction to him. In Act 4, Rodolfo throws the pink hat into the garbage bin. At first it felt like the act of someone who wanted to forget his pain, after the final curtain I did wonder instead whether it pointed to Rodolfo feeling that Mimì was disposable. Vick’s staging is certainly complex and multifaceted, just like life, and gives us an enormous amount to consider and reflect on.

Photo: © Andrea Ranzi

Musically, this was a remarkable evening. Dendievel conjured up magic in the pit with the Comunale orchestra. Even in the difficult acoustic of the Comunale’s temporary theatre, he obtained a phenomenal range of orchestral colour from his musicians, creating precisely those castles in the air through the sound of the orchestra. There was something so implicitly Italian in the way they phrased this music, their corporate sound completely married to the textures in the score. Dendievel’s tempi were wonderfully mercurial, changing in an instant from longing to rage, as they did in Act 3. He judged the final act perfectly, giving his singers space, yet never allowing the music to drag and lose life just as Mimì entered her final moments. He allowed the orchestra to take wing, filling the room with a glow of sound, yet never covered his singers, which meant that that glorious outpouring as Mimì and Rodolfo combined their voices in ‘o soave fanciulla’ completely overtook the listener, and allowed one to bathe fully in this magnificent combination of voice and orchestra. Again, this is an enormous achievement in a space as difficult as this. Even with his elastic and constantly-evolving tempi, Dendievel kept his singers with him, with stage-pit coordination absolutely tight throughout the evening – with one tiny exception in the ensemble in the first scene, completely expected on a first night. When Mimì and Rodolfo first met, it made me reflect that the coup de foudre doesn’t come with a loud bang, but in the gentle realization of muted strings. He clearly enjoys a fantastic relationship with this tremendous orchestra. This may be Dendievel’s first Bohème, but I very much hope it will be the first of many.

Photo: © Andrea Ranzi

Of course, it helped that he had such excellent singers at his disposal. Karen Gardeazabal gave us a glorious Mimì. The voice has the crystalline purity of spring water, yet she was able to soar with ease over the surging textures, opening up on top in rosy pulchritude. She has so much musicality in her singing, phrasing the music with love and affection. Those lines in Act 4, when she expressed her love for Rodolfo, the voice descending to a rich chestiness and then crossing through the registers to open up on high beautifully, all with total evenness, were simply ravishing. So much of what Gardeazabal achieved was in total union of text, note, and gesture, her understanding of all three so deeply implicit and genuine. Her technique is fabulous, able to control the dynamics so fully, the voice so well supported from top to bottom. Gardeazabal gave us a lovely piece of singing and moved me immensely tonight.

Photo: © Andrea Ranzi

Ştefan Pop sang Rodolfo in his warm, Italianate tone. He opened up nicely on top in his ‘che gelida manina’, the high C full and bright, phrasing his music with love and affection. Having had the pleasure of hearing Pop on other occasions, it did strike me that there was a touch of graininess to the tone tonight that I hadn’t previously heard in his singing, suggesting that he might have been suffering from an unannounced indisposition. That said, he was so fully committed to the role, just as with his castmates, bringing both the text and music to life through his utterly convincing acting. The awkwardness in his first interactions with Mimì were so d

Egyptian Conflict: Aida at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 10:40:31 +0000

Verdi – Aida

Aida – Aleksandra Kurzak
Il Re – Antonio Di Matteo
Amneris – Marie-Nicole Lemieux
Radamès – Arsen Soghomonyan
Amonasro – Ludovic Tézier
Ramfis – Erwin Schrott
Un Messaggero – Vincenzo Di Nocera
Sacerdotessa – Galia Bakalov

Chœur de l’Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Orchestre philharmonique de Monte-Carlo / Massimo Zanetti.
Stage director – Davide Livermore.

Opéra de Monte-Carlo, Grimaldi Forum, Monte-Carlo, Monaco. Saturday, November 22nd, 2025.

Tonight marked my first ever visit to Monaco and the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, for its new production of Aida imported from Rome, Italy. This is a house that has been on my radar for quite some time, with its interesting casting and long operatic tradition. This season also sees a staged, period-instrument Walküre in January, and a very interestingly cast Trovatore in March. Rather than perform this Aida in its historical theatre, the house moved to the larger and very modern Grimaldi Forum. The auditorium of the Salle des Princes is rather large, located 1.5 metres below sea level and down several flights of escalators, although the acoustic from my seat towards the back of the lower level was actually very kind to the voices. Unfortunately, the evening ran significantly behind the scheduled running time, due to a long delay at the start of the evening and at intermission, which meant some significant anxiety for those of us with trains to catch. There was much that was enticing in the casting this evening, with Québécoise star, Marie-Nicole Lemieux, making her debut run as Amneris – tonight singing the third performance of a run of three. There were several changes also in the remainder of the cast, with Ludovic Tézier a very luxurious replacement for the originally scheduled Artur Ruciński, and Dr Aleksandra Kurzak stepping in at the very last moment for Anna Pirozzi, following her debut run in the title role at Verona this summer.

Photo: © OMC / Marco Borrelli

Davide Livermore’s staging seems to be inspired by the silent films of the 1920s. The visuals are sepia-toned, with ‘historical’ costumes, by Gianluca Falaschi, reflecting that period’s view of Egypt. The set, by Giò Forma, is simple, consisting of some stairs, a few panels that are wheeled on and off, and a chaise longue for Amneris to hold court on, while the King descends from the flies on a balcony upon which are superimposed two triangles. Instead, the budget clearly seems to have been spent on a large panel, which displays video, by D-WOK, during the course of the evening. This is not a new way of setting up a production for Livermore, having produced a Trovatore in Parma two years ago that had a similar set-up. The imagery shown was fairly banal, with some aspects that looked like a screensaver, the odd bit of Egyptian imagery showing a seated Pharoah, a woman occasionally making a screaming gesture, and some gushing water. Fortunately, it wasn’t especially distracting and was easy to tune out of and focus on the singers and remainder of the stage action.

Photo: © OMC / Marco Borrelli

What that focus did reveal is that the singers were incredibly under-directed. Far too often, they were simply parked at the front to emote, or to fall to their knees in moments of great drama. Livermore’s personenregie felt far too clichéd, relying on stock operatic gestures to tell a story, when I longed for him to give us a sense of characters who genuinely engaged with each other on a human level. Furthermore, he made frequent use of a corps of danseuses, choreographed by Livermore himself and Carlo Massari, who added additional visual interest to the video. I must admit that I found the choreography rather risible and hard to take seriously. In the triumphal scene, he had the danseuses running around the stage, simulating slashing their wrists, while grunting noisily as they gyrated. In the scene in the temple of Fthà, they also indulged in some movement which wasn’t clear if they were worshipping a deity or having epileptic fits. Livermore also had the chorus engage in some hand choreography while they were parked on stage during the big choral moments, but this was inconsistently applied.

Photo: © OMC / Marco Borrelli

Musically, it was a much more compelling evening. After his vital and vigorous Nabucco in Modena last month I expected a lot from Massimo Zanetti’s conducting. He took a different approach to Aida. This is a work that starts softly, builds to some big triumphal scene, and then ends in a moment of quiet contemplation and ‘pace’. Zanetti gave the work plenty of space in which to unfold, with tempi that were on the more leisurely side. This wasn’t particularly conducive to the anxiety of knowing whether one would catch the last train, and it also meant that the Act 2 duet between Aida and Amneris sagged, despite Lemieux’s significant efforts to add serious drama into proceedings. Despite the simplicity of the stage design, the evening was frequently held up for long scene changes, which also did not help with the pacing. The quality of the playing of the Orchestre philharmonique de Monte-Carlo was superb. There was a precision to the brass fanfares in the introduction to ‘celeste Aida’ and a depth to the string tone in the tomb scene that both gave a great deal of pleasure. The chorus, prepared by Stefano Visconti, sang lustily. There was a very impressive depth of tone to the basses in those a cappella passages in the Temple of Fthà, while the sopranos and mezzos also provided rich tone in the first scene of Act 2. In the triumphal scene there were a few moments of disconnect between stage and pit, perhaps due to the distance between the two, but generally they sang with discipline and accuracy.

Photo: © OMC / Marco Borrelli

Kurzak is certainly at an interesting point in her career, now taking on those bigger soprano roles such as Tosca, Santuzza, and this Aida. The state of her current instrument made me reflect on the words of one of the greatest of Aidas, Miss Leontyne Price, who reminds singers to always sing with the interest and not the capital. Kurzak’s soprano now sounds more arid of tone than of yore, with the voice sounding made to be artificially bigger, lacking in the ultimate degree of spin, with intonation becoming more approximate as a result. Where Kurzak did excel was in the softer, floated writing of ‘o patria mia’, where she was able to pull back on the tone, and floated up magically up to the high C. Elsewhere, there was a nagging doubt that she was pushing the voice further than it can naturally go. Kurzak is nothing if not musical, and her singing was always founded on an implicit understanding of the Verdian phraseology, frequently pulling out a generous chestiness, not afraid to resort to a kind of sprechgesang down there for dramatic effect. Her Aida was unconventional, certainly, but I did appreciate her willingness to give so generously of herself to us.

Photo: © OMC / Marco Borrelli

Lemieux was a thrilling Amneris. As is so often the case with her, so much of her singing was based in the text, using it as the starting point for her interpretation, bringing out meaning and feeling. She used the words to shade the tone – lightening it in her opening duet with Radamès, filling the word ‘sperenza’ with so much luminosity of vocal colouring. Her exhortation for him to ‘ritorna vincitor’ was given so much metal and colour that there was no way he would return empty handed. I’ve also never had so much of a sense of Amneris’ complexity as with Lemieux’s assumption of the Act 2 duet with Aida. She made those few moments into a whirlwind of emotion, from haughtiness to jealousy, every emotion communicated in her union of text and tone. Her contributions to the judgment scene were electric – the pain, the anger, the determination, all were brought out in a reading of Shakespearian depth and complexity. A few squally notes at the very top were a small price to pay for an assumption that was utterly thrilling.

Photo: © Michele Monasta / Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

Berlioz - La Damnation de Faust, at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées in Paris

Wed, 12 Nov 2025 12:36:00 +0000

Théâtre des Champs Elysées (TCE), Paris Wednesday November 6 2025

Conductor: Jakob Lehmann. Production, sets, and costumes: Silvia Costa, assisted by Laura Ketels, Ama Tomberli, Simon Hatab, Michele Taborelli. Lighting: Marco Giusti. Faust: Benjamin Bernheim. Marguerite: Victoria Karkacheva. Méphistophélès: Christian Van Horn. Brander: Thomas Dolié. Les Siècles orchestra. Radio France chorus and children's choir.

Photos: Vincent Pontet

Silvia Costa has been around long enough, assisting Romeo Castellucci and directing films, plays and operas herself, to have won an artistic knighthood in France as a ‘Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres’, but this Damnation was my first experience of her work, and proved baffling. As with Shirin Neshat’s recent Aida, I’ll start by outlining the production, as its weaknesses impacted the musical side of the evening. This bald outline should also give those not present an insight into why, without preparation, I found the staging baffling, but of course if you aren’t interested in productions or are just pressed for time, you can skip it.

As the curtain - and the sun - rises, we find Faust in bed, in a shabby studio flat with raw plywood walls, under a mountain of plush toys that cascade to the floor as he emerges, bare-chested and with dishevelled hair, in his boxers. Without even a splash of water, he pulls on clothes from a crumpled heap nearby. These include a half-knotted tie, a detail that struck me as particularly unlikely - until the end: see below. He nibbles at some leftovers, waters a house plant, and on the floor, scribbles on large sheets of paper before crumpling and binning them. So perhaps he’s an artist, I thought - but Le Figaro‘s critic supposed he was a composer, which may make more sense.

He dons jumbo headphones as the peasants sing and dance offstage, and is driven to distraction, holding his tousled head, by the Hungarian March on a crackling, vintage radio. As the music plays, he toys with the light switch - off, on, off and on again; and as his frenzy mounts, he hurls his clothes against and over the walls. For the Easter hymn, calming down, he wheels out a projector on a stand to watch a slide-show of family snapshots from his childhood (‘Ô souvenirs!’). As Méphistophélès strolls in with a wry grin, in a royal blue boiler suit with peaked shoulders and a black beret (I couldn’t work out what this outfit signified), the plywood walls collapse with a bang.

For the tavern scene, children in grey suits and ‘bald wigs’ ringed with grey hair emerge - like the monsters and spirits in Sellars’ Castor et Pollux last year - from various openings, including the oven as well as traps in the floor, to mime to the offstage chorus. As Brander, in an identical suit and wig, sings, the kids toy with what appears, worryingly, to be a live mouse or rat in a glass box. Marguerite is puzzlingly absent and zombie-like, in disturbingly grubby-looking pink. She stirs a pan of soup or whatever listlessly with a wooden spoon (the cooker is still there), and for some reason briefly puts her head in the oven.

After the interval, the orchestra, all dressed - conductor too - in judges’ robes, is high up on a platform at the rear, with the chorus, similarly costumed, lined up higher behind. Faust’s ever-present bed is now to the fore, and the pit is empty. ‘D’amour l’ardente flamme’ and ‘Nature immense’ are sung in this courtroom setting. To descend into hell, Faust descends into the pit, capering wildly (so I read afterwards; as I was in the stalls, I couldn’t see), wielding music stands (which I did see) as weapons. And finally, a child, wearing the same yellow cardigan as Faust - and a tie - walks in stiffly, and shakes Mephistopheles’ hand. Surrounded by the other children, all neatly dressed in yellow jumpers, all with ties (school uniforms), he is tucked into bed peacefully by the no-longer-zombie-like Marguerite.

As I mentioned above, I went to this Faust without preparation. I prefer to confront new productions without prior study, and do my reading, if need be, afterwards. In this case, the TCE informs us that Silvia Costa’s production is ‘more abstract than narrative,’ and invites us ‘to follow Faust's dreamlike journey in search of the source of life.’ It is, then (yet again, you might say, as the approach has long helped directors explain away the inexplicable) all a dream or nightmare, hence the ever-present bed. But whose dream or nightmare? The implication, at the end, seems to be that it was the child Faust's. But if Marguerite, tucking him in, is actually his mother, that raises other, more troubling implications…

I could quote Silvia Costa from an interview in Opéra Magazine, hoping to offer clues, but she herself admits her thoughts are fragmented, and that she has a tendency to contradict herself. I could barely make head or tail of the article, and remain baffled. But even if her ideas were good and I alone am too thick to penetrate them, my impression was that her directing wasn’t strong enough to sustain them comprehensibly, consistently and convincingly over the duration of the evening. The characters were only partially formed, vague and woolly and lacking evident purpose. And Damnation, a ‘Légende Dramatique’, not an opera as such, includes longish instrumental and choral passages which are a real test for directors staging it, as they strive to concoct convincing, apparently meaningful things for the soloists to do. A Bieito on a good day might pull it off. You can have Mephisto pretend to conduct for a while, but not too long and often. In the end I felt sorry for Benjamin Bernheim, putting such visible effort into acting the tortured artist, throwing tantrums, emoting into the house and leaping around the pit with his music stands for long stretches at a time.

Finally, the production never delivers any of the sense of wonder, majesty, evil, awe or diabolical magic you anticipate from such a Romantic work as Damnation: a few puffs of stage smoke and some red lighting don’t do it. And the orchestra, a key player in Berlioz, offered no support at all.

Over twenty years ago, in an article headed ‘Everything you ever wanted to know about Sax…’, I explained how ‘bright, brilliant, radiant, colourful’ the sound of the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique was in Les Troyens under Gardiner. That performance convinced me I would never need to hear Berlioz on modern instruments again. Les Siècles used to be a respected period band, but since it lost its founder (to accusations of sexual abuse) has apparently lost its mojo. Perhaps, as well as its conductor, it has lost some… key players. The performance was, in a word, dismal. The orchestra started out a mess, improved slightly for the Hungarian March, but never delivered the bite and crunch, the thrills you hope old instruments will provide, or played with accuracy, let alone vigour, or even, under Jakob Lehmann, discernible phrasing, a semblance of style. Rarely, after an opera in Paris, are a conductor and orchestra booed, but menacing rumblings could be heard from the upper floors on Thursday night.

In these shaky circumstances, it was up to the poor singers alone to carry the evening, and obviously, with only half a production (though not, I thought, deserving the furious booing that greeted it at the premiere) and an absent orchestra (in Berlioz of all things!) this was a tough call.

The Radio France chorus, usually first-rate though not always at ease on stage, were at their best when actually visible and standing still. When they were in the wings, coordination was problematic, and when milling around on stage you could see them snatching at any opportunity to glance at the conductor, to keep in time.

The cast was, as you might expect, dominated by Benjamin Bernheim. To his usual honeyed timbre, accuracy at whatever pitch, well-turned phrasing and perfect diction, he’s now bringing a good deal of vocal power. (Until now, it had continued to surprise me that I’d first heard him as Rodolfo.) However, Faust’s perpetually tortured characterization deprived us of his usual charm, he had to work hard to keep that characterization afloat, and above all, the weakness of the orchestra sapped his big numbers. The magnificent orchestral introduction to ‘Nature immense’, for example, with its usually majestic rumblings and shifting and surging, just wasn’t there, tragically diminishing what should be an awe-inspiring overall effect.

Christian Van Horn is becoming a familiar face in Paris - he was Philippe II in this year’s revival of Don Carlos at the Bastille - a welcome one as far as I’m concerned. As you might expect, he made a fit, jovial Méphistophélès, more wryly teasing than diabolically devious, more like a ribbing 'bro' than the devil incarnate, with a brighter, less cavernous sound than some, though a dark, resounding core.

Marguerite must be a daunting role to take on, when so many illustrious singers have sung the ‘Roi de Thulé’ song (to my ear, Berlioz at his weirdest), or the (contrastingly) marvellous ‘D’amour l’ardente flamme’. Victoria Karkacheva, new to me, is a welcome discovery. Her voice is reassuringly secure, with a brighter timbre than some of those famous forebears (as I guess will also be true of her Carmen next year at the Bastille), even a touch steely at the top. It’s a real shame that the production, with its withdrawn characterization of the role, again undermined the impact of her arias.

Finally Thomas Dolié brought his customary distinction, even surrounded by a rowdy troupe of kids, to the rumbustious role of Brander.

In sum, Silvia Costa may have worked with Romeo Castellucci but is no Castellucci or Bieito herself, Les Siècles are not the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, and Jakob Lehmann is not Sir John Eliot Gardiner. By a long chalk. For the singers only, this one.

Note: an edited version of this post may be published on Parterre.com. Meanwhile, here's Wenarto - in this case, without any cracks in the introductory woodwind solo:

The Makropulos Case, Royal Opera and Ballet, 10 November 2025

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 17:44:10 +0000

Royal Opera House

Emilia Marty – Ausrine Stundyte
Krista – Heather Engebretson
Albert Gregor – Sean Panikkar
Baron Jaroslav Prus – Johan Reuter
Dr Kolenatý – Henry Waddington
Vítek – Peter Hoare
Count Hauk-Šendorf – Alan Oke
Janek – Daniel Matoušek
Stage Door Woman – Susan Bickley
Security Guard – Jeremy White
Hotel Maid – Jingwen Cai

Katie Mitchell (director)
Vicki Mortimer (set designs)
Sussie Juhlin-Wallén (costumes)
James Farncombe (lighting)
Sasha Balmazi-Owen (video)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Jakub Hrůsá (conductor)

Image: The Royal Opera / Camilla Greenwell

If the Royal Opera and Ballet’s new Makropulos Case does indeed prove to be Katie Mitchell’s final opera production, we should think of it more as a culmination than a farewell. If the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at dusk, the outlines of Mitchell’s operatic work – part, to be sure, of her broader theatrical work, but a distinctive part – may now seem clearer to us all. Rightly or wrongly, for I can lay no claim to oracular status on this or any other question, they certainly do to me following this superlative evening, dramatically and musically, in the theatre, a splendid addition to the company’s Janáček series? May we hope for a Mr Brouček, even a Šárka or an Osud? Hope dies last, as the ambiguous, even oracular, saying has it.

And death lies at the heart of this work, as does life—as does their cyclical relationship both in Janáček’s work as a whole and this production, in turn both in its overt presentation and in its broader, metatheatrical, even symbolic frame. One might say the same of women, their role in society, and their role in opera, Mr Brouček’s Excursions the great exception, for even From the House of the Dead has one feel their absence. The Makropulos Case is centred, of course, around a great female singer, a great survivor, a woman seemingly infinitely blessed, but in reality, if not infinitely, then gravely cursed. She is literally the creation of men, in some ways figuratively too. I say ‘a woman’ and of course she is, but as such and as a human, she deserves to be named: Emilia Marty, Elena Makropulos, and the rest. (We may, if we wish, recall Kundry’s many names and incarnations. Wagner was not a feminist; to claim so would be anachronistic nonsense. But his works are not without feminist themes and, more to the point, opportunities—as well as themes and opportunities that are anything but. The same, of course, may be said of Janáček.) Mitchell takes a further step: this woman is queer, standing in no need of men, whatever the history with which she has been furnished (by them) may claim. She has fond memories; she has produced numerous ‘bastards’ with them, but now does not care for them (men or children).

Now forty-plus = or so she claims and appears – EM seeks women on ‘dating’ apps. With a technological bent very much of our time, the opera begins, app and text message communications, courtesy of Sasha Balmazi-Owen, running parallel to, interacting with, and sometimes undercutting the work ‘itself’. Krista and Janek intend to rob her, the former (‘they/them’) ensnaring her prey 200 metres distant and securing an invitation to her hotel room. The proceeds, whose net worth Janek instantly checks online as Krista photographs them, include an eighteenth-century medallion and a rare, early twentieth-century playbill. Yet ultimately, Krista falls for EM, mesmerised as her male admirers, yet apparently feeling and sharing something deeper. Rather than absconding to Berlin with her (former) lover, she shoots him: shades of Lulu, perhaps, yet with the crucial distance that this is no blank canvas onto which male fantasies are projected. This is women in love, by women, for women.

Surtitles are contemporary English in tone, without becoming paraphrase. Additional communications fly across the ether: ‘Berlin or bust’, popular abbreviations, emojis, and so on. Like anything else, use of text messages – also here telephone calls, audio and video – can be a cliché, a gimmick, and too often is. Here, unlike in, say, Simon Stone’s tedious, extravagant, and tediously extravagant Médée – If ever there were an opera crying out for the Mitchell touch… - or Kirill Serebrennikov’s silly Marriage of Figaro, it serves a useful dramatic purpose, both straightforwardly and more metatheatrically in its extension of live cinema to new realms in successful pursuit of Mitchell’s longstanding and, in this case, unapologetically queer subversion of the male gaze both generally and in specifically operatic guise. For when the diva comes at long last to die, she is not so much a creature of opera, but opera itself. Has the director killed the genre or let it die? More significantly, has it in its death, which may yet permit of rebirth though not artificial prolongation, at last been liberated of the male gaze. On an optimistic reading: yes, at least in part.

Janácek’s score naturally invites some degree of optimism, its increasingly rapt lyricism, orchestral themes coalescing into something greater, brought home with wondrous, golden immediacy by Jakub Hrůsá at the helm of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. That Hrůsá is the real thing no one who has heard him will doubt, but this proved a significant achievement even by his standards, as intellectually as it was emotionally involving. The same must be said of Ausrine Stundyte’s all-encompassing assumption of the title role, rightly permitting of various readings whilst ever sure of its direction. No wonder the rest of her world lay in her thrall. All contributed something to the greater whole, showing what the world of opera can and should be. I shall note Sean Panikkar’s typically ardent, lyrical Albert Gregor, Peter Hoare’s sharply characterised Vitek, Heather Engebretson’s sparky Krista, and, in another tribute, conscious or otherwise, to the best of an opera company and its progress of time, Johan Reuter ‘moving up’ from, say, Orest and Birtwistle’s Theseus to Baron Prus, and Susan Bickley from numerous Covent Garden roles (and her ENO Dido with Mitchell) to the cameo of the Stage Door Woman. It was, though, a collaborative effort, as production, conductor, work, and any future for the genre demand.

From that ENO After Dido, Purcell’s jewel forming part of a greater theatre piece, through a Salzburg Al gran sole carico d’amore I imagine I might understand better now than I did in 2009, live cinema again offering a feminist corrective or at least enhancement to Luigi Nono’s project of telling European revolutionary experience from the standpoint of female revolutionaries, the woman’s revenge of Written on Skin and queer love of Lessons in Love and Violence, the postdramatic feminism of The Blue Woman, and important reassessments such as her Aix Ariadne auf Naxos and Pelléas and Covent Garden Theodora, a path becomes traceable towards this Makropulos Case. Is it the end of the line? That should not really even be the question; it is certainly an important, musicotheatrically riveting contribution, one I am keen to see again, should I be able.

Cathérine Clément notoriously described opera as the ‘undoing of women’. Perhaps, if one is extremely selective—and one treats it only in terms of libretti. Go back to Monteverdi’s Poppea or forward to Rebecca Saunders’s recent operatic debut and it seems anything but. Nevertheless, that book or at least its title remains, whether we like it or no, part of operatic discourse. Carolyn Abbate’s review said most, perhaps all, of what need be said about it. And here, as it must, that theory is realised in practice, without in any sense jettisoning necessary critique. Actually existing opera houses and their ways are, or can be, another thing. This is not in any sense intended to refer to the Royal Opera House in particular; indeed, its relatively recent, highly publicised appointment of an intimacy coordinator marked an important step forward in one respect. I know no details of the opera-world misogyny Mitchell has endured – her recent interview lies behind a Murdoch paywall – and I do not intend to speculate. What I can say is that operatic works, historical and contemporary, and performances offer greater scope for critique and, dare I say it, redemption than the day-to-day activities of any company will. This year’s greatest musical centenary, that of Pierre Boulez, reminds us of the necessary utopianism of his celebrated 1967 interview with Der Spiegel.

New German opera houses certainly look very modern—from the outside; on the inside, they have remained extremely old-fashioned. To a theatre in which mostly repertory pieces are performed one can only with the greatest difficulty bring a modern opera—it is unthinkable. The most expensive solution would be to blow the opera houses into the air. But do you not think that that might also be the most elegant solution?

In turn, that echoes a Wagner’s diary entry from 1849.

8 May (Monday) Morning once again by roundabout route via barricades to Town Hall. At S. Anne Barricade guard shouts “Well, Mr Conductor, joy’s beautiful divine spark’s made a blaze.” (3rd perf. 9th Symphony at previous Palm Sunday concert; Opera House now burnt down. Strange feeling of comfort.

This latest death will not destroy our opera houses and companies, nor even leave them peacefully to die, but should at least ask us whether that would be advisable. Is this, rather than opera as the undoing of women, then, women as the undoing and possible rebirth of opera? It might, considered in utopian fashion, constitute an act of operatic reform or revolution to be compared with the work composers such as Wagner, conductors such as Boulez, directors such as Stefan Herheim, and singers such as Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, noting ruefully and purposefully the gender balance of historical examples, whilst recalling Boulez’s own caution that, although Wagner’s Bayreuth project was in almost every respect right and necessary, it has not had the slightest effect on the day-to-day life of our benighted operatic culture. And yet, it has, for our revolutionary-reformers continue to offer a critique of patriarchy, of heteronormativity, and of capitalism many of us continue to heed. To do more than criticise, we must all play our part. The Royal Opera and Ballet has done so too, staging Janáček’s opera (incredibly) for the first time and supporting a new way forward. The Royal Opera and Ballet has done so too, staging Janáček’s opera (incredibly) for the first time and supporting, among many other things in its necessarily mixed economy, some seeds of a new way forward.

La Bohème in HD 2025

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 03:08:38 +0000

Two important announcements immediately followed today’s telecast of Puccini’s glorification of the quotidian. The first was that this show surpassed Graham’s number in frequency of performance. The second, and equally significant, is that from next season forward every show at the Met will be a staging of La Bohème – Puccini’s, not Leoncavallo’s. Casts may change, but the opera will remain a constant. When asked to comment on the change, Met General Manager Peter Gelb remarked that there’s always someone in the audience who is seeing La Bohème for the first time. This observation is also sneaking up on Graham’s number.

Franco Zeffirelli’s 1981 production still delivers the ambience that lets Puccini’s remarkable score dazzle even the most jaded opera goer. I’ve been attending La Bohème for 70 years, and it still works. The characters are all ordinary people mispending their youth. They’ll never amount to much, but Puccini’s magic makes us care about them. After their youth is gone, they’ll return home to their native villages and teach school. Rodolfo will mostly forget Mimì and father a brood of children who will waste their young years.

The two most important characters are, of course, Mimì and Rodolfo. They were played and sung with feeling and sensitivity by Juliana Grigoryan and Freddie De Tommaso. Ms Grigoryan is a beautiful woman who looks too healthy for the consumptive seamstress. She’s very young and her characterization will doubtless add depth as she gains more experience – an artist on the ascent.

British tenor De Tomasso has a bright voice that is well suited for Puccini’s starving playwright. The only problem is that he has the tenor’s occupational body habitus – he’s in danger of assuming the shape of a manatee. The rest of the Bohemians were likewise overupholstered. We can knock off 30 pounds per performer as an opera allowance.

The cast was all very good. Particularly fine was Lucas Meachem as Marcello. It’s not a part that usually gets a lot of attention, but he gave the painter a simple gravitas and made a real person out of what can be a stock character.

Maestra Keri-Lynn Wilson led the Met’s orchestra to a fine realization of Puccini’s unique sound. The orchestra could play the score to perfection via Zoom if needed. The chorus and cast of thousands brought off Puccini’s Helzapopin Act 2 with panache.

I don’t need to say much more. La Bohème speaks for itself and defeats elitist critics who find it too easy to assimilate. The opera is a wonder that only a great master could conjure. If you like the opera, and you must be deranged or terminally snobbish not to, catch the replay if you missed today’s live broadcast. You might want to see the replay even if you were at today’s performance. Viva Puccini!

La Bohème
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/Giuseppe Giacosa

Mimì……….Juliana Grigoryan
Rodolfo……….Freddie De Tommaso
Musetta……….Heidi Stober
Marcello……….Lucas Meachem
Schaunard……….Sean Michael Plumb
Colline……….Jongmin Park
Benoit/Alcindoro……….Donald Maxwell
Parpignol……….Gregory Warren
Sergeant……….Jonathan Scott
Officer……….Ned Hanlon

Conductor……….Keri-Lynn Wilson
Video Director……….Gary Halvorson

Is the Met Opera Dead?

Sun, 09 Nov 2025 03:07:26 +0000

Is it a zombie? Animate but lifeless? It’s probably too soon to tell, but it’s well on its way to the six-foot trench. Is the terminal event linked to the Met alone or to the art form in general? A caveat, I’m not as good at predicting the future as was Yogi Berra, so you might be better off turning on a recording of La Traviata and ignoring what follows. But if you’re not detetered by warnings, read on.

The Met’s first problem is poor leadership. General Manager Peter Gelb has one positive accomplishment in nearly two decades on the job – the HD telecasts of live Met productions. Outside of this important achievement, his tenure has been drab. He has needlessly involved the company in international politics, as if opera house politics were not deadly enough.

He has dismissed some of the company’s brightest stars for behavior that the Met has known about for many years. Anna Netrebko was let go for being Russian, only to have Gelb engage a succession of lesser Russian singers. Jame Levine and Placido Domingo were sent packing without a goodbye. Gelb has the loyalty of a clam. Levine and Domingo didn’t even get a gold watch. Then he hires a bunch of Russian singers without making them denounce Vladimir Putin. He also hires his wife to lead the band.

If previous GMs were as sensitive to sexual peccadillos, Caruso would have been fired after the Monkey House incident in Central Park in 1906. Ezio Pinza was said to be a fanny pincher, Beniamino Gigli has several families and scattered bastards around he world. Toscanini slept with most of his leading sopranos. None was disciplined by the Met. So by previous standards, Gelb is at least a prude. But if he were any good at the core of his job this bourgeois failing could be overlooked.

Gelb’s biggest blemish is his financial mismanagement. He repeatedly schedules expensive productions that fail at the box office or require rapid replacement, such as his La Sonnambula debacle. Two productions of this infrequently performed opera in 15 years is a sign that the GM doesn’t know what he’s doing. Tosca and Traviata both had to have premature replacement productions because of inferior new productions that should have lasted for decades. A wonderful Aida was replaced with a piece of treacle. Consider Zefferelli’s Bohème, which is still wowing the audience long after its producer has departed the proscenium.

The company’s endowment is only about $255 million, down about $100 million from the previous year. They had to use the endowment to cover operating expenses which reflects poor fiscal management. The endowment is very small considering the size and importance of the Met in the opera world.

Gelb’s programming continually force-feeds the Met’s audience inferior new works that are enormously expensive to mount and which fail to attract a sufficient audience. The company’s record of success with new productions is virtually nonexistent. Of all their premiere’s only two have been of works that endured, both by Puccini.

Behind the glitter of the Lincoln Center palace lies an infrastructure that’s crumbling (as are the exterior walls of the center’s buildings) due to inadequate care and attention. Not all of the decay is the fault of management. Tastes and skill sets vary with time. Opera, as a popular diversion, has receded into the shadows as movies and their congeners have claimed both creative talent and the public’s attention. It may be that there is no longer room for the art form to thrive, save as a memory.

Verdi is at the core of the operatic repertory, yet the company has no Verdi singers of genius. They can do Puccini, but Verdi is currently a big problem. They’ve tried Germanic singers in key Verdi roles without a felicitous result. It’s not an accident that there’s no Verdi opera on the company’s HD list for this season.

Regardless of externals and immutables, the company could be run with more regard for efficiency and the tastes of its audience. At more than $300 a ticket, said audience is apt to be as scarce as it is gray. Of course, efficiency, the need to fill an auditorium with 4,000 seats, and the presence of no one knows how many unions make for an immovable sludge. The Met’s palace cum theater does the company more harm than good. It would be far better off to present opera using its up-and-coming talent at a smaller venue where it could offer a different bill of fare. But that’s like asking the New York Yankees to play at Marine Park. And the ball club has a much larger and devoted audience.

The Met is a prisoner of its past and present. The former glorious, the latter mired in fly paper. I doubt if the company could be saved even if it were managed by someone who knew what he was doing. Short of Elon Musk coming to the rescue as he did for Twitter, I see nothing but dark days ahead. And Musk has shown no indication that he has any inclination for music, much less the kind that emanates from an opera house.

The Met may endure, but if it does, it will be a sideshow. And as if things weren’t bad enough, it’s in New York.

Invano Alvaro

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 15:12:09 +0000

‘Invano Alvaro’ is the last of three tenor-bartitone duets that grace Verdi’s La Forza Del Destino. All three are excellent, but the final one is likely the best such duet ever written by the composer. It’s in the same class as ‘Quando al mio sen per te parlava’ from Act 3 of I Vespri Siciliani and ‘Si, pel ciel’ from Otello. What sets the Forza duet apart is that it moves the plot while being both beautiful and dramatic. Indeed, it is the plot. It starts at the end of the opera’s penultimate scene and runs into its final one.

The duet is found in several places on this site. But I’ve never devoted an entire post to it. Below are 11 interpretations of it sung by noted artists. Most of these selections have not appeared here before. The Italian text with an English translation is at the end of this article.

From a 1943 recording Giacomo Lauri-Volpi is joined by Gino Bechi. The tenor enjoyed a remarkably successful career that spanned 40 years. He appeared to great acclaim at all the world’s great houses. Yet I’ve never cared for his voice. I find it unattractive and somewhat shrill and forced. Given the success and acclaim he enjoyed my opinion must be an outlier. Baritone Gino Bechi had a very successful career based mainly in Italy. He had a big and virile voice which can be heard on numerous recordings.

In 1953, in New Orleans, Mario Del Monaco and Leonard Warren participated in a staged performance of Forza. This excerpt is from that show.

Two duets featuring Giueppe Di Stefano are from 1955 and 1960. The ’55 excerpt is from a La Scala performance. Di Stefani’s partner is Aldo Protti. I’ve recently written about him. Note how good he is in this duet. This period was at the tail end of Di Stefano’s peak. He’s in terrific form. Of course, Alvaro is a role he shouldn’t have sung, but his emotional commitment is so palpable that it’s easy to understand why he and his conductors and directors wanted him to stray from the roles best suited to his beautiful lyric voice. By 1960, he was well on the downward path; yet, in this performance in Vienna, he managed to pull himself together and deliver an outstanding performance. It was perhaps the last time he was at his best. First 1955, then 1960. The baritone in the second clip is Ettore Bastianini.

Net two featuring Luciano Pavarotti. He never sang the complete opera in performance. He felt it was a bad luck opera. Leonard Warren had died in the middle of a performance of it in March 1960. These two excerpts are from recitals. The first is with baritone Piero Cappuccilli. The second is with the very young Dmitri Hvorostovsky. It was made several years before the Russian singer made his first Met appearance.

The next duet is from a Met performance featuring Giuseppe Giacominini and Leo Nucci.

This selection is taken from the complete performance of the opera featuring Jonas Kaufmann and Ludovic Tezier.

Jose Carreras and Piero Cappuccilli recorded the duet in 1981 before Carreras was stricken with leukemia. He recovered and returned to singing, but his voice was never again at the standard it reached before his serious illness.

More recently, tenor Jonathan Tetelman and baritone Adam Unger recorded the duet. It’s with an organ accompaniment which sounds okay. Tetelman recently made his Met debut.

Finally, a recording that’s appeared here before. The now legendary version sung by Richard Tucker and Robert Merrill at the 1972 Gala in honor of Sir Rudolf Bing. It features Merrill’s cosmic finalmente.

It was useless, Alvaro, to hide from the world and try to shield your villainy in hypocritical robes. Hate and thirst for vengeance showed me the road to this cloister where you hide; no one here shall keep us apart; only blood, your blood, can wash away the stain which outraged my honour: and I shall spill it all, I swear to God. (Don Alvaro enters in monk’s robes.) DON ALVARO Brother – DON CARLO Recognise me! DON ALVARO Don Carlo! You – alive! DON CARLO For five years I have followed you, at last ah! at last I’ve found you… Blood alone can cancel the infamy, your crime; that I should punish you one day was written in the book of Fate. Once you were brave; now, as a monk, you have no sword… But I shall have your blood – choose, for I have two. DON ALVARO Once I lived among men – so I understand; but this monk’s habit – the cloister –	DON CARLO Invano Alvaro ti celasti al mondo e d’ipocrita veste scudo facesti alla viltà. Del chiostro ove t’ascondi mi additò la via l’odio e la sete di vendetta; alcuno qui non sarà che ne divida. Il sangue, solo il tuo sangue può lavar l’oltraggio che macchiò l’onor mio: e tutto il verserò, lo giuro a Dio. (Entra Alvaro, in abito di frate.) DON ALVARO Fratello… DON CARLO Riconoscimi. DON ALVARO Don Carlo! Voi, vivente! DON CARLO Da un lustro ne vò in traccia, ti trovo, ah! ti trovo finalmente… Col sangue sol cancellasi l’infamia ed il delitto. Ch’io ti punisca è scritto sul libro del destin. Tu prode fosti, or monaco, un’arma qui non hai… Deggio il tuo sangue spargere, scegli, due ne portai. DON ALVARO Vissi nel mondo, intendo; or queste vesti, l’eremo,
they bespeak my salvation from sin, the repentance of my heart! Leave me, leave me. DON CARLO Neither that garb nor the hermitage will be able to defend you – coward! DON ALVARO (infuriated) Coward! What a word – (to himself) No, no. Help me, o my Lord! (to Don Carlo) Fierce words and threats, be carried off by the wind. Forgive, have pity, have pity, brother, have pity, have pity! Why offend in this way a man who was only unfortunate? Come, let us bow before fate, brother, have pity, have pity. DON CARLO You soil the very name of pity… Ah! When you went away, my sister remained, abandoned and betrayed, to infamy, to dishonour. DON ALVARO No, she was not dishonoured. It is a monk who gives you his oath. On earth, I adored her as only one in heaven can love.	dicon che i falli ammendo, che penitente è il cor. Lasciatemi, lasciatemi. DON CARLO Difendere quel sajo, né il deserto, codardo, te non possono. DON ALVARO (trasalendo) Codardo! Tale asserto… (fra sé) No, no! Assistimi, Signore! (a Don Carlo) Le minaccie, i fieri accenti, portin seco in preda i venti; perdonatemi, pietà, o fratel, pietà, pietà! A che offendere cotanto chi fu solo sventurato? Deh, chiniam la fronte al fato, o fratel, pietà, pietà. DON CARLO Tu contamini tal nome… Ah! una suora mi lasciasti che tradita abbandonasti, all’infamia, al disonor. DON ALVARO No, non fu disonorata. Ve lo giura un sacerdote! Sulla terra l’ho adorata come in cielo amar si puote.
I love her still; if she still loves me, my heart cannot ask for more. DON CARLO My anger will not be quieted by base and cowardly words. Take up you sword, and come. do battle with me, o traitor! DON ALVARO If now it is too late for either remorse or tears to speak for me. You shall see me as none has ever seen me – prostrate at your feet! (He throws himself at Don Carlo’s feet.) DON CARLO Ah, the stain upon your crest is proved by this act! DON ALVARO (leaping to his feet in anger) My crest shines brighter than a jewel. DON CARLO It is coloured by your half-breed’s blood. DON ALVARO (unable to restrain himself) You lie in your throat! – give me a sword! (He takes a sword.) A sword! Lead on! DON CARLO At last!	L’amo ancor, e s’ella m’ama più non brama questo cor. DON CARLO Non si placa il mio furore per mendace e vile accento. L’arme impugna, ed al cimento scendi meco, o traditor. DON ALVARO Se i rimorsi, il pianto omai non vi parlano per me qual nessun mi vide mai, io mi prostro al vostro piè! (Si getta ai piedi di Don Carlo.) DON CARLO Ah! la macchia del tuo stemma or provasti con quest’atto! DON ALVARO (saltando in piedi arrabbiato) Desso splende più che gemma. DON CARLO Sangue il tinge di mulatto. DON ALVARO (non potendo più frenarsi) Per la gola voi mentite! A me un brando! (Impugna una spada.) Un brando, uscite! DON CARLO Finalmente!
DON ALVARO No, the devil shall not triumph. Go, leave me. (throwing down his sword) DON CARLO You mock at me? DON ALVARO Go. DON CARLO If now, you coward, you lack courage to measure swords with me, I condemn you to dishonour. (He slaps Don Alvaro’s face.) DON ALVARO (furious) Ah, now you have sealed your fate! Death! (He takes up the sword again.) DON CARLO Death to both! DON CARLO and DON ALVARO Ah! Come to your death, come! (They rush out.)	DON ALVARO No, l’inferno non trionfi. Va, riparti. (Getta la spada.) DON CARLO Ti fai dunque di me scherno? DON ALVARO Va. DON CARLO S’ora meco misurarti, o vigliacco, non hai core, ti consacro al disonore. (Gli dà uno schiaffo.) DON ALVARO (furente) Ah, segnasti la tua sorte! Morte! (Raccoglie la spada.) DON CARLO Morte! A entrambi morte! DON CARLO e DON ALVARO Ah! Vieni a morte, a morte andiam! (Escono precipitosamente.)

Opéra Magazine's top-rated recordings for September, October and November 2025

Sat, 01 Nov 2025 09:03:00 +0000

I was still on holiday in Greece when the latest two issues of France's Opéra Magazine arrived, so I found them in the pile of post waiting for me when I got home a couple of weeks ago.

The first was marked ‘Septembre 2025’ as normal. The second, marked ‘Octobre-Novembre 2025’, announced out of the blue, in its editorial, that ‘In order to provide you with more in-depth articles, more substantial investigations and richer information, we will now be publishing every two months.’ A cheeky bit of spin, I think, from a magazine that’s recently changed hands and, so I understand, since then lost or fired most of its staff.

Their ‘coup de coeur’ - i.e. their top pick - in September, with one of their special ‘Diamond’ awards, was Dido and Aeneas with Joyce DiDonato and Michael Spyres under Emelyanchev, dubbed a new ‘reference’ and ‘set to be seen as a landmark recording.’

It doesn't happen often, but their top pick in the October-November, again with one of their ‘Diamonds’, is a DVD set: Andreas Homoki’s Zurich production of the Ring, with - to name a few - Konieczny, Cutler, Vogt and Nylund under Noseda: ‘What a team at the service of Wagnerian drama !’

Horton - Chopin and Bach, 29 October 2025

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 10:21:01 +0000

Wigmore Hall

Chopin: Prelude in C-sharp minor, op.45
Bach: English Suite no.2 in A minor, BWV 807
Chopin: Waltz in A minor, op.34 no.2; Fantasy in F minor, op.49; Polonaise in C-sharp minor, op.26 no.1; Polonaise in E-flat minor, op.26 no.2; Mazurka in B major, op.63 no.1; Mazurka in F minor, op.63 no.2; Mazurka in C-sharp minor, op.63 no.3; Polonaise-fantaisie in A-flat major, op.61

Tim Horton (piano)

Tim Horton’s Wigmore Hall residency, in which he presents Chopin’s music alongside important predecessors, contemporaries, and successors, has reached Bach, offering the second English Suite and an illuminating Chopin selection. The C-sharp minor Prelude – Chopin’s, not Bach’s – opened and proceeded in a way that set the tone for the entire recital: both muscular and melting, clarity and direction likewise two sides to the same musical coin. The notes mattered, and one felt that; so too did Chopin’s harmonic surprises. Not for the last time here, without necessarily sounding Lisztian, the playing made one keen to hear Horton’s Liszt. At the opposite end of the first half, the A minor Waltz, op.34 no.2, explored its tonality with a sadness emerging from its material, rather than applied to it, and thus all the stronger for it. Rubato here, as elsewhere, was unexaggerated yet telling. Chopin’s harmonic transformations and much else stood in Bach’s line, whilst remaining ineffably the composer’s own.

In between came the English Suite, its A minor presaging the Waltz. This was not Chopinesque Bach as such; it had its own validity. It was, though, a validity that drew connections and created a properly satisfying musical programme, reminding us that Bach’s may be the greatest piano music of all (with absolutely no apology to devotees of other keyboard instruments). The Prelude, rhythms tightly sprung, offered a fine framework for melodic and harmonic exploration and expression, striking an excellent balance between dynamic contrasts that were of the moment and structurally conceived, in fact showing the distinction ultimately to be illusory. Following its relative extraversion, the Allemande turned inwards, again relatively speaking, leading to a Courante that was both robust and subtle, its lineage unmistakeably French, albeit with equally unmistakeable German colouring and grounding. A beautifully dignified, even luxuriant Sarabande led us into the harmonic labyrinth, but also guided us through it. The Bourrées and Gigue offered both intensification and release, just as they should.

The F minor Fantasy, op.49, opened the second half, inheriting and extending the recital’s preceding virtues, whilst delineating this piece’s decidedly particular character and form. Echoes of Schumann, however fleeting, registered clearly in a musical kaleidoscope that again, if not exactly Lisztian, was not exactly un-Lisztian either. This music can readily fall apart when presented according to pre-conceived structural ideas that are not Chopin’s; not so here, quite the contrary. The two op.26 Polonaises and the were eloquently presented in relation to one another, harmonic foundations key to that conception. The anger and grief of the latter, in E-flat minor, spoke with a sensibility it was difficult not to think tragic, albeit finely differentiated. (But then, is not Hamlet?) I found it deeply moving.

So too were the three op.63 Mazurkas, similarly conceived as a set, yet ever alert to individual qualities. A particularly Chopinesque sadness to the second contrasted with and in its way confirmed both the well-sprung first and the syncretic, unifying qualities of the third. Counterpoint and harmony, as with Bach, were indivisible. The Polonaise-fantaisie is not my favourite Chopin, but this attentively painted performance had me listen and, I fancied, understand its structure as rarely before. Unfailingly eloquent, it unfolded both on its own terms and in light of what had gone before. As Jim Samson points out in his typically excellent programme note, examination of Chopin’s sketches shows that Chopin was ‘really composing a Fantasy, similar in conception and even in tonal organisation to the other Fantasy performed thius evening, and that he added the polonaise rhythm … to the principal melody as an afterthought.’ Compositional origins sounded here with musical immanence. As an encore, we heard a characteristic op.9 no.2 Nocturne, direct and sensitive in equal measure. Once again, I look forward to future instalments in this fascinating series.

Verdi - Aida, at the Opéra Bastille in Paris

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 08:35:00 +0000

ONP-Bastille, Wednesday October 22 2025

Conductor: Dmitry Matvienko. Production: Shirin Neshat. Sets: Christian Schmidt. Costumes: Tatyana van Walsum. Lighting: Felice Ross. Choreography: Dustin Kline. Aida: Ewa Płonka. Radames: Gregory Kunde. Amneris: Judit Kutasi. Amonasro: Roman Burdenko. Ramfis: Alexander Köpeczi. Il Re: Krzysztof Bączyk. Un messaggero: Manase Latu. Sacerdotessa: Margarita Polonskaya. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.

Photos (featuring first cast): Bernd Uhlig/ONP

When the Paris Opera staged Olivier Py’s production of Aida in 2013, it was their first since 1968, in one that dated back to 1939. Since then, they’ve made up for their omission. Py’s (to me, not as bad as people said) made it through just two seasons, until 2016. Lotte de Beer’s, with its luxury cast, in 2021, which I found quite entertaining though thousands didn’t, apparently succumbed to the pandemic. Now, in 2025, we have a revised ‘edition’, as she herself puts it, of Shirin Neshat’s 2017 Salzburg staging. I was still on holiday in Greece when it opened, but was back in time to catch the second cast.

For those who may not know, Shirin Neshat is an Iranian artist living in exile in the USA. Her work, typically black-and-white photography or film, often centres on the resilience of people, women especially, faced with religious and political oppression. As she explains in interviews on the Paris Opera’s website, she relates to Aida because she herself is a woman living in a country whose ‘worst enemy’ is her own homeland, and lives in fear of its destruction by war.

She admits she knew nothing about directing opera when approached by Salzburg, and that, intimidated by its status and traditions, watered down her first staging (2017, revised in 2022). In 2025 (i.e. in the present revision), she says, ‘you will see a much more critical and raw version,’ giving heightened visibility - in photos and videos, as well as on stage - to the victims of fanaticism and militarism combined: ‘We see that people of religion are (...) the greatest threat to humanity,’ and that victory in war emerges from ‘brutality they inflict on others, whose lives don’t matter. It’s really a subject we’re facing today (...) The people are the victims, the losers.’

The result is something familiar to us all, when artists are brought in to direct. Rather than a production of Aida per se, what we see has a ‘Gleichzeitig!’ feel to it; only here, instead of a commedia dell’arte troupe playing while Ariadne laments on her island, a quite conventional (albeit handsomely-costumed) opera is performed - as if incidentally - by soloists who are left to their own devices as far as acting is concerned, in the midst of a large-scale Shirin Neshat exhibition combining black-and-white photos and film clips with engaging young actors and dancers. In short, a ‘vintage’ opera has apparently strayed into a contemporary-art installation. There are some very good-looking tableaux, but there are also puzzling gaps in the action while videos and slide-shows are projected, and the soloists’ stock operatic gestures seem to come from another era than their modern surroundings.

For the record, the central element in the set is a monumental, white ‘concrete’ cube that revolves and opens up to form the various spaces required, including, at the end, the tomb. Sometimes - for example in the very successful temple scene - a grouping of vertical tubular lights is suspended above. There are no particular visual references to Egypt as such, though in projections we do see, e.g. a medieval fortress, and a lot of sand. Aida has a plain black dress and goes barefoot. Amneris wears floating chiffon dresses that change colour with the acts. (Judit Kutasi swept their long trains aside angrily every time she turned; I don’t know if this was a deliberate element of the mise en scène, but it certainly makes her look petulant.) Radames wears an ordinary, modern uniform.

The priests, with their long beards, look Orthodox, whether Greek or Coptic, and Ramfis’s fine gauze coat recalls (to me, at least) those favoured by Iran’s rich senior clerics - or Saudi princes. The priestesses are in flowing black and white robes, as much nuns’ habits as the chadors that often feature in Neshat’s work. Dark, enigmatic dervish- or KKK- or penitent-like figures with pointed headgear sometimes stalk by. The young extras or dancers roughed up (and eventually machine-gunned after their pardon) by the military (‘the people are the victims, the losers’) wear the simple, modern black that young extras or dancers wear.

Photos and videos of migrants in a boat, veiled women, women hunched in a circle digging a grave with their bare hands, funeral rites, men carrying bodies, and so on, point to notions of oppression, submission, exile, and torn identities. Both a beast and a naked girl are sacrificed. As in Iran today, the women - e.g. in Amneris’s chamber, and including Amneris herself - demonstrate their strength and resistance in face-offs with the uniformed powers-that-be.

However, as I said, in the midst of all this, the soloists are more or less left to their own devices. Ewa Płonka’s voice, as Aida, was initially - like some of the wines I sipped gingerly in Greece this summer - thin and tart and short on sensuality and seductiveness. She improved after the interval, but even then, while she has all the notes, her sound remains dry and she sings with limited emotional impact - indeed, in this case limited impact tout court, as her voice is a notch too small for the Bastille. Her personality never asserts itself more than as a kind of Verdian Micaëla. Puzzling casting, to me, for a major international house, especially one of this size.

In the case of Judit Kutasi (Amneris), those ‘own devices’ hovered perilously - depending in part on the colour of her dress - between Divine (red), Mae West (white) and the petulant Miss Piggie (like Dolora Zajick in the Met production), any of whom, my neighbour unkindly suggested at half time, might have been preferable. She’s certainly game, and visibly believes in what she’s doing, but, moodily twirling her blond tresses between her fingers in her boudoir, still recalls La Gran Scena’s Vera Galupe-Borszkh. Sometime in her career, the basic material of her voice must have been sound; it was intermittently one of the most Verdian of the evening. But there are times you just can’t figure out what she’s singing, as if everything - notes, diction and all - were swallowed up in a generous vibrato. She too, however, fortunately firmed up somewhat after the interval.

Gregory Kunde, once he’s warmed up and his voice has settled, is (albeit with audible effort) astonishingly good, though it hardly seems necessary to say so as everyone already knows. But the character he projects, sober, wise and fatherly, isn't seductive, let alone that of an impetuous young warrior-lover (I doubt that in the first cast, Beczala, the eternal matinee idol, was that either). Undirected, his acting was of the sagely-nodding, chin-stroking kind. And I’m afraid that at one point, when buffeted between opposing parties, he reminded me momentarily of Michel Sénéchal as Ménélas getting shunted off to Crete in Laurent Pelly’s Belle Hélène.

‘Pas la distribution du siècle,’ not the cast of the century, was my neighbour’s reaction to this vocal curate’s egg, though he agreed that the supporting roles - Roman Burdenko’s ardently dramatic Amonasro, Alexander Köpeczi’s elegant, velvety Ramfis, Krzysztof Bączyk’s jet-black king, Margarita Polonskaya’s supple, fluent Sacerdotessa - were well filled.

But in the end, the stars of the show were the young conductor, Dmitry Matvienko, the orchestra and the chorus. I said, when writing about the Brussels concert that opened this new season, that Matvienko’s conducting there boded well for his Verdi here, and - though I say it myself - I was right. He is visibly attentive to both stage and pit, while bringing clarity, colour, contrast and nuance, along with a rhythmic spring, to the score. Never before have I felt Verdi’s ballets (not actually danced in this production, so it was easy to focus on the pit) were a highlight of an evening of Aida: played with delicacy, they sparkled colourfully like something by Rimsky-Korsakov. And the chorus in the temple scene was sublime - Matvienko is Belarus and studied in St Petersburg. He must have the Orthodox sound in his veins. He’s now based in Aarhus, but as far as I’m concerned, he can come to Paris whenever he wants.

Which reminds me: have they found a new music director for the Paris Opera yet?

Note: an edited version of this post may be published on Parterre.com. Meanwhile, here's Wenarto:

Medical Reporting in the Lay Press

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 17:56:09 +0000

Relying on the lay press for medical advice can often lead to incorrect conclusions or misguided directions. The article linked below is a good example of how well-meaning but improperly thought out reporting can lead to conclusions not based on solid experimental design or reasoning.

Drinking More Than 1 Can of Any Soda Daily Linked to Liver Disease

The following is a quotation from the news report: A study of nearly 124,000 people found that drinking just one daily serving of artificially sweetened drinks increased the risk of a liver disease known as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease or metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD).

It’s from a British study that has not yet gone through peer review. It’s a self-reported study which always adds uncertainty to the data. It also has many uncontrolled variables, at least according to the press report. First, who gets fatty liver disease? The list below shows the major risk factors for the disorder. Who were the control groups for this study? Were they the same, save for their propensity to drink artificially sweetened drinks? Who drinks these beverages? People who are already at risk for fatty liver disease – ie, the obese.

For this study to have any meaning (I’m faulting the reporter who may not have had the full extent of the study, though, I doubt that’s the whole explanation) it would have controlled for all the other variables that predispose to fatty liver disease except for the consumption of artificially sweetened drinks.

Such a study would be very difficult and certainly could not be done by self reporting. Another conclusion to these data could easily be that people at the highest risk for fatty liver disease drink artificially sweetened drinks. It’s even possible that they may be reducing their risk by keeping their weight down. This is pure conjecture on my part, but it’s a possibility no matter how remote.

It’s hard enough to get decisive medical advice from your general physician who may not be well-trained in clinical investigation, epidemiology, and study design. But you certainly won’t get it from the lay press. Aeger medicīnālis, cave!

Obesity – especially central (abdominal) obesity
Type 2 diabetes mellitus
Insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome
Dyslipidemia – high triglycerides and/or low HDL cholesterol
Hypertension
Sedentary lifestyle and poor diet (high in sugar, refined carbs, and saturated fats)
Genetic predisposition (variants in genes like PNPLA3, TM6SF2, MBOAT7)
Age – risk increases with age
Sleep apnea
Polycystic ovary syndrome
Hypothyroidism and hypopituitarism
Medications – e.g., corticosteroids, tamoxifen, methotrexate, amiodarone

Oppression and Redemption: Nabucco at the Teatro Comunale Pavarotti-Freni Modena

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 09:54:08 +0000

Verdi – Nabucco

Nabucco – Alexey Zelenkov
Ismaele – Matteo Desole
Zaccaria – Ramaz Chikviladze
Abigaille – Svetlana Kasian
Fenena – Chiara Mogini
Il Gran Sacerdote – Lorenzo Mazzucchelli
Abdallo – Saverio Pugliese
Anna – Laura Fortino

Coro Lirico di Modena, Orchestra Filarmonica Italiana / Massimo Zanetti.
Stage director – Federico Grazzini.

Teatro Comunale Pavarotti-Freni di Modena, Modena, Italy. Saturday, October 25th, 2025.

Tonight marked my first visit to the Teatro Comunale Pavarotti-Freni in Modena, named, of course, after that city’s most famous children, two of the greatest singers of the twentieth century. It’s a jewel of a theatre, with seating for 901. Having travelled there, I must admit to having had a little trepidation before entering the theatre. The region of Emilia-Romagna has seen an explosion in anti-Jewish hate over the past two years. Earlier this month, the mayor of Reggio Emilia was booed at a public event for calling for the release of the hostages; while in the town of Conselice last week, a memorial to victims of the Shoah was defiled. I did start to fear the worst with an opera that focuses on the oppression of the Jewish people.