We left at the interval...

ONP Bastille, Tuesday June 20 2023 Conductor: Carlo Rizzi. Production: Thomas Jolly. Sets: Bruno de Lavenère. Costmes: Sylvie Dequest. Lighting: Antoine Travert. Choreography: Josépha Madoki. Fights: Ran Arthur Braun. Juliette: Elsa Dreisig. Roméo: Benjamin Bernheim. Frère Laurent: Jean Teitgen. Capulet: Laurent Naouri. Stephano: Lea Desandre. Gertrude: Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo. Mercutio: Huw Montague Rendall. Mercutio: Florian Sempey. Benvolio: Thomas Ricart. Tybalt: Maciej Maciej Kwaśnikowski. Pâris: Sergio Villegas Galvain. Gregorio: Yiorgo Ioannou. Le Duc de Vérone: Jérôme Boutellier. Manuela: So-Hee Lee. Pepita: Izabella Wnorowska-Pluchart. Angelo: Vincent Morell. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. Photos : Vincent Pontet/ONP     Roméo et Juliette is the fourth of Thomas Jolly's opera productions I've attended (the others were Eliogabalo in 2016, Fantasio in 2017, and Dusapin's Macbeth Underworld in Brussels in 2019), and a kind of 'team style...

  Recording of the month (their ' coup de coeur' ) in the June issue of France's Opéra Magazine , with a 'Diamond' rating (the highest), is Strauss's Capriccio from the Semperoper in Dresden, on the Arthaus Musik label. The production is by Jean-Daniel Herzog, and the cast includes Camilla Nylund, Christoph Pohl, Daniel Behle, Nikolay Borchev, Georg Zeppenfeld, Christa Mayer and Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, all under Thielemann. The reviewer says this is a 'Masterly Capriccio' that shoots straight to the top of the video catalogue, alongside Carsen's 2004 production from the Palais Garnier in Paris. At the time of writing this post, the whole opera is available on YouTube :