We left at the interval...

ONP Palais Garnier, Tuesday December 10 2024 An edited version of t his post will be published on Parterre.com Conductor: Susanna Mälkki. Production and lighting: Olivier Py. Sets and Costumes: Pierre-André Weitz. Tom Rakewell: Ben Bliss. Nick Shadow: Iain Paterson. Trulove: Clive Bayley. Ann Trulove: Golda Schultz. Mother Goose: Justina Gringytė. Baba the Turk: Jamie Barton. Sellem: Rupert Charlesworth. Keeper of the madhouse: Vartan Gabrielian. Voices from the crowd: Ayumi Ikehata, Frédéric Guieu. Solo voice: Laurent Laberdesque. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.  Photos: Guergana Damianova/OnP After playing thoroughly modern Millie, seeing (and struggling to write up) three new works in succession, I was back on more familiar ground this week with The Rake’s Progress at the Palais Garnier. The production isn’t new: it was Olivier Py’s first opera for Paris, in 2008, and it returned in 2012. But for some reason, it had escaped my attention till this seaso...

Staatsoper Unter den Linden im Schiller Theater, Berlin, Thursday March 14 2013 Conductor: David Robert Coleman. Production: Krzysztof Warlikowski. Sets and costumes: Małgorzata Szczęśniak. Lighting: Felice Ross. Video: Denis Guéguin. Trulove: Jan Martiník. Anne: Adriana Kucerová. Tom Rakewell: Stephan Rügamer. Nick Shadow: Gidon Saks. Mother Goose: Birgit Remmert. Baba the Turk: Nicolas Ziélinski. Sellem: Erin Caves. Keeper of the madhouse: Gyula Orendt. Staatskapelle Berlin. Staatsopernchor. Stravinsky This production of The Rake’s Progress was covered so well and in such depth by Opera Cake in 2010 that it hardly seems necessary for me to add anything, other than that I had a partly different cast. It can't have been easy for Opera Cake : once again, Krzysztof Warlikowski's production was typically... What's the word? A web? A tapestry? Kaleidoscopic? Whatever the word is for involving a profusion of ideas and details, themes, images, symbols, actions, a...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday May 6 2007 Conductor: Kazushi Ono. Production: Robert Lepage, with Ex Machina, Quebec . Anne Trulove: Laura Claycomb. Tom Rakewell: Andrew Kennedy. Nick Shadow: William Shimell. Mother Goose: Julianne Young. Baba the Turk: Dagmar Peckova. Trulove: Darren Jeffery. Sellem: Donal Byrne. Keeper of the Madhouse: Shadi Torbey. Orchestr and chorus of La Monnaie. Unusually, the Financial Times published a reader’s rebuttal of its reviewer’s complaints that the singers in Brussels ’ new production of The Rake’s Progress were often faint and that the production might have been more original and better-handled. Well, I was there yesterday, and I can see the critic’s point. For a start, to keep things perfectly objective, my neighbour, not herself an FT reader, spontaneously opined at the interval that Andrew Kennedy “might really be not bad at all, but I can’t hear him.” She also spontaneously compared this production to Robert Carsen’s Paris Candide – which also to...