We left at the interval...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday January 28 2007 Conductor: Kazushi Ono. Production: Richard Jones. Sets: John Macfarlane. Costumes: Nicky Gillibrand. Ruprecht: Tómas Tómasson. Renata: Elena Popovskaya. Fortune-Teller: Elena Manistina. Landlady: Beata Morawska. Mephistopheles: Leonid Bomshteyn. Agrippa von Nettesheim: Vitali Taraschenko. Johann Faust: Ante Jerkunica. Inquisitor: Vladimir Samsonov. Mother Superior: Maria Gortsevskaya. Jacob Glock: Lorenzo Caròla. Doctor: Zeno Popescu. Mathias Wissmann: Andrej Baturkin. Innkeeper: Nabil Suliman. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie. Sometimes it takes an exceptional performance to crack a thorny work. I have two recordings of The Fiery Angel , one in French and the other in Russian, and have seen it at least once before. But in my mind it remained pigeonholed as an incomprehensible (in fact mad) story set to a noisy score. This Brussels production made sense of both. It was clear from the opening bars that the orchestra of La Monnaie was on es...

ONP Bastille, Wednesday January 24 2007 Conductor: Michael Güttler. Production: Michael Haneke. Don Giovanni: Peter Mattei. Il Commendatore: Mikhail Petrenko. Donna Anna: Carmela Remigio. Don Ottavio: Shawn Mathey. Donna Elvira: Arpiné Rahdjian. Leporello: Luca Pisaroni. Masetto: David Bizic. Zerlina : Aleksandra Zamojska. Rossini’s La pietra del paragone , which I reviewed last week, is styled a melodramma giocoso . I mention this in case any passing directors might be looking for an insight into what giocoso means or meant back then, the custom being, with Il dissoluto punito ossia il Don Giovanni , dramma giocoso , to ignore the adjective and focus exclusively on the noun. A bit like Chéreau’s Ring , Michael Haneke’s production of Don G . for the Paris opera started out being booed to the rafters but seems, now, to be considered a classic of sensible updating. Ignoring the adjective, Haneke plays the work as a brutal, sinister, sordid, (and musically sluggish) drama of abuse of pow...

“Fantasyland of adornment” – a selection of customer reviews The Three Tenors, Sarah Brightman, Andrea Bocelli, Renée Fleming and others. [Note: spelling, spacing, punctuation, etc, are copied and pasted exactly as published on Amazon] Well I have one thing to say.. Art is Art and Renee is Renee. Before i start with anything, I don't have this album, but not in this form. I have almost the whole albums of this great soprano, and that means that I already have this album. Songs selected here are quite good, but they are, like what I've mentioned, are not for fans like me. The songs are quite catchy to catch someone by ear, but not me. Katherine Jenkins is a wonderful opera singer she reminds me of Nana Mouskouri... If she chooses to record Sarah Brightman's repertoire over and over again, she should get herself some comparable pipes. Listening to this recording reminds me of a stunning molasses sculpture. I don't even want to get THIS! Sexy Andrea Bocelli on...

Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, Thursday January 18 2007 Conductor: Jean-Christophe Spinosi. Production and video: Giorgio Barberio Corsetti, Pierrick Sorin. Marchesina Clarice: Sonia Prina. Baronessa Aspasia: Jennifer Holloway. Donna Fulvia: Laura Giordano. Pacuvio: Christian Senn. Conte Asdrubale: François Lis. Giocondo: José Manuel Zapata. Conte Macrobio: Joan Martín-Royo. Fabrizio: Filippo Polinelli. Ensemble Matheus. Chorus of the Teatro Regio di Parma. It isn’t often the production team gets the loudest applause of all, in Paris or elsewhere, especially for what would presumably pass, in the US, for Eurotrash. Rossini’s La Pietra del Paragone is an almost plotless piece of first-class fluff, untainted by a moment’s depth, lasting a full three hours. It requires two main things to avoid eventual lassitude: an unflaggingly entertaining, well-regulated production, and excellent playing and singing. While the singing, last night, was creditable, the production was outstandingly imaginat...

Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, Thursday December 28, 2006 Conductor: John Axelrod. Production, lighting: Robert Carsen. Costumes: Buki Shiff. Voltaire, Pangloss, Martin: Lambert Wilson. Candide: William Burden. Cunegonde: Anna Christy. Old Lady: Kim Criswell. Grand Inquisitor, Captain, Governor, Vanderdendur, Ragotski: John Daszak. Paquette: Jeni Bern. Maximilien: David Adam Moore. Cacambo: Ferlyn Brass. Ensemble Orchestral de Paris. Chorus of the Théâtre du Châtelet. It must be hard to know what to with Candide . Though it’s supposed to be a “comic operetta” it isn’t really clear what sort of voices it requires: operatic or Broadway. The extreme wordiness of the libretto (or should I say lyrics?) is in inverse proportion to the dramatic coherence and drive of the plot. And the piece has had such a chequered history it now seems unclear which version might be called “right”. To give some semblance of coherence to the whole, Robert Carsen’s characteristically box-fresh, bright-as-a-button ...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday December 10 2006 Conductor: Stéphane Denève. Production, sets, costumes and lighting: Karl-Ernst & Ursel Herrmann. Violetta Valéry: Virginia Tola. Alfredo Germont: James Valenti. Giorgio Germont: José van Dam. Flora Bervoix: Natascha Petrinsky. Annina: Marielle Moeskops. Gastone,Visconte di Letorières: Alexander Oliver. Barone Douphol: Shadi Torbey. Marchese d’Obigny: Pierre Doyen. Dottor Grenvil: Jacques Does. Orchestra and chorus of La Monnaie. “A solid, provincial Traviata ” doesn’t sound very flattering, but take it in a positive way and it just about sums up this 1987 production revived by La Monnaie. For Brussels, the staging is unusually traditional and straightforward, without falling into Zeffirellian excess or Kitsch, and the cast is more one of definite promise (with the exception of Germont) than of international stars. The sets are firmly Second Empire: machine-age faux luxe . Act one takes place in an oval saloon with walls and sha...

ONP Bastille, Tuesday December 5 2006 Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Production, sets and costumes: Herbert Wernicke. Die Feldmarschallin: Solveig Kringelborn. Der Baron Ochs: Franz Hawlata. Octavian: Anke Vondung. Herr von Faninal: Olaf Bär. Sophie: Heidi Grant Murphy. Marianne Leitmetzerin: Michèle Lagrange. It’s probably only my bad luck, but I’m beginning to think Rosenkavalier is like La Traviata : famous and popular but rarely a great experience in the theatre. The last time we had this Wernicke production in Paris it had a “dream cast”: Fleming, Bonney and Graham, and was so dull we left before act 3, unable to face all the unamusing rigmarole that has to be sat through before the arrival of the Feldmarschallin. The same production is back in town, this time of course without Wernicke, and seems to be jinxed. Vesselina Kasarova dropped out before the first night and Anne Schwanewilms fell ill at the weekend. Heidi Grant Murphy is still standing, but as she’s inaudible at th...