We left at the interval...

Opéra Garnier, Paris, Wednesday February 18 2026 Conductor: Case Scaglione. Production: Ralph Fiennes. Sets: Michael Levine. Costumes: Annemarie Woods. Lighting: Alessandro Carletti. Choreography: Sophie Laplane. Onegin: Boris Pinkhasovich. Tatiana: Ruzan Mantashyan. Lensky: Bogdan Volkov. Olga: Marvic Monreal. Prince Gremin: Alexander Tsymbalyuk. Larina: Susan Graham. Filipievna: Elena Zaremba. Monsieur Triquet: Peter Bronder. Zaretski: Amin Ahangaran. Commander: Mikhail Silantev. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris. Photos: © Guergana Damianova - OnP A handful of quotes to start the ball rolling: ‘Moderation is a fatal thing, Lady Hunstanton. Nothing succeeds like excess.’ (Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance.) ‘Le grand ennemi de l’art, c’est le bon goût’ (art’s greatest enemy is good taste). (Marcel Duchamp.) ‘C’est plat’ (as in ‘platitude’). My neighbour at the first interval. ‘J’adore cette partition. Qu’est-ce qu’on s’est ennuyé !’ (I love this score. Were we...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday February 5 2023 Conductor: Alain Altinoglu. Production and Costumes: Laurent Pelly. Sets: Massimo Troncanetti. Lighting: Marco Giusti. Larina: Bernadetta Grabias. Tatiana: Sally Matthews. Olga: Lilly Jorstad. Filippyevna: Cristina Melis. Onegin: Stéphane Degout. Lensky: Bogdan Volkov. Gremin: Nicolas Courjal. Petrovich: Kris Belligh. Zaretsky: Kamil Ben Hsaïn Lachiri. Triquet: Christophe Mortagne. Guillot: Jérôme Jacob-Paquay. Precentor: Hwanjoo Chung. La Monnaie Orchestra and Chorus. Photos: Forster, La Monnaie Two Pelly productions in a row: after a youthful Le Voyage dans la Lune at the Opéra Comique on Friday, Eugene Onegin in Brussels on Sunday. But before writing about the production, I want to plunge straight in with a paean of praise for Stéphane Degout. Pardon me, in advance, for the laboured, purple prose; sometimes I find the going tough. I don't know how the professionals do it. This was, so I read, Degout's role début as Onegin and h...

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Tuesday January 20 2015 Conductor: Rafael Payare. Wiener Philharmoniker. Schubert: Symphony n°8 , D. 759, "Unfinished" Tchaikovsky: Symphony n°4 (Encore) Eduard Strauss: Mit Chic (polka) Tchaikovsky For the 2014-2015 season I decided we'd have a change from quitting second-rate performances of second-rate scores at the interval by dropping one of our usual opera subscriptions and buying a series of visiting (i.e. non-French) orchestras at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées. On account of work (as anyone who goes to operas and concerts knows, these things have to be paid for), I missed the first of these wholly orchestral concerts: the St Petersburg Philharmonic in Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky (in this case, the 6th ), magnificent I was told by the friends who were able to attend. This VPO concert was thus, for me, the first, and it was largely a disappointment: I had hoped to be thoroughly wowed, and wasn't. Rafael Paya...

ONP Bastille, Tuesday January 31 2012 Conductor: Dimitri Jurowski. Production: Lev Dodin. Sets: David Borovsky. Costumes: Chloe Obolensky. Lighting: Jean Kalman. Hermann: Vladimir Galouzine. Tomsky: Evgeny Nikitin. Prince Yeletsky: Ludovic Tézier. Chekalinsky: Martin Mühle. Surin: Balint Szabo. Countess: Larissa Diadkova. Lisa: Olga Guryakova. Polina: Varduhi Abrahamyan. Masha: Nona Javakhidze. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. Children’s choirs of the Hauts-de-Seine and the Opéra National de Paris. The ever-excellent Opera Cake blog is not alone in noting that at the Paris Opera these days, only reruns of old productions are any good (though not all of those). This is the fourth outing of Lev Dodin’s staging of La Dame de Pique in Paris, and a good one it is (better, thank goodness, than his Salome , which has already been ditched), so it’s surprising it still manages to get booed on opening night, when the man himself is there too boo at. It comes as welcom...

ONP Bastille, Monday September 20 2010 Conductor: Vasily Petrenko. Production: Willy Decker. Sets & costumes: Wolfgang Gussmann. Lighting: Hans Toelstede. Madame Larina: Nadine Denize. Tatiana: Olga Guryakova. Olga: Alisa Kolosova. Filipievna: Nona Javakhidze . Eugene: Ludovic Tézier. Lenski: Joseph Kaiser. Prince Gremin: Gleb Nikolski. Monsieur Triquet: Jean-Paul Fouchécourt. Ugo: Rabec Zaretski. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. There are evenings at the opera when everything is so sound that you can’t easily put your finger on what it was that left you not-quite-satisfied (“sur votre faim”). So it was this Monday at Eugene Onegin . The singers? Surely not. Nadine Denize may now make a rather underpowered Madame Larin, but hers isn’t a pivotal role. Olga Guryakova’s voice may be a little harder and stiffer than it was back in War and Peace , but, as my neighbour said, what magnificent sounds she makes. And (a) whatever she may have lost (and that’s not much), s...

La Monnaie, Brussels – January 30 2005 Conductor: Daniele Callegari. Production: Richard Jones. Sets & costumes: John Macfarlane. Hermann: Vitali Taraschenko. Tomsky: Tómas Tómasson. Prince Yeletsky: Vladimir Chernov. The Countess: Nina Romanova. Lisa: Tatiana Monogarova. Pauline: Marina Domashenko. Chekalinsky: Lorenzo Caròla. Surin: Nabil Suliman. Chaplitsky: Marc Coulon. Narumov: Shadi Torbey. Major Domo: André Grégoire. Governess: Beata Morawska. Masha: Elise Gäbele. The fall of iron-curtain communism may not have done wonders for the German economy, but it has certainly given opera a shot in the arm, releasing a seemingly endless supply of excellent singers. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the cast of Pikovaya Dama in Brussels was every bit as good as Gergiev’s on his Philips recording, though only one was actually in it (Chernov. In Brussels, Chernov and Taraschenko were the only two names I knew). However, I think some aspects of the production occasionally r...

Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, November 19th 2003 Conductor: Bernard Haitink. Dresdner Staatskapelle. Bela Bartok, Concerto for Orchestra Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky, Symphony N°6 in B minor, Pathétique, op. 74. When Bernard Haitink planned, as part of his 75th birthday celebrations, to bring the Dresdner Staatskapelle to Paris for a concert of Bartok and Tchaikovsky, he probably didn’t expect, at the end of part one, to be booed. It must have come as an unpleasant surprise. He certainly looked grim about it, as if he felt like booing back or spitting. The orchestra looked bemused. Admittedly, this was a lone booer, though – bad sign for Haitink - his booing wasn’t drowned, as is usually the case, by a surge of clapping and cheers. The polite, lukewarm applause continued. Bartok Now, booing, I know, is not much approved of on the fora I frequent. And of course, the lone booer wasn’t me. But I think I may have guessed how he felt. When he planned, coughing up a substantial sum – perhaps even a...