We left at the interval...

Opéra Comique, Paris, Saturday February 28 2009 Conductor: Laurence Equilbey. Production: Richard Brunel. Sets: Marc Lainé. Costumes: Claire Risterucci. Lighting: Mathias Roche. Albert Herring: Allan Clayton. Lady Billows: Nancy Gustafson. Florence Pike: Felicity Palmer. Miss Wordsworth: Ailish Tynan. Mr. Gedge: Christopher Purves. Mr. Upfold: Simeon Esper. Superintendant Budd: Andrew Greenan. Sid: Leigh Melrose. Nancy: Julia Riley. Mrs Herring: Hanna Schaer. Musicians of the Orchestra of the Opéra de Rouen. Members of the Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine. Coproduction between the Opéra Comique and the Opéra de Rouen Haute-Normandie. I wasn’t brought up on opera, or brought to it in any structured way. So as it happens, the first two operas I got to know well were Les mamelles de Tirésias , a favourite of a family of Swiss intellectuals I met in Lausanne, and Albert Herring . I was called in, as an undergraduate, to play in the pit for Albert when the bass player sprained her thumb, and th...

Opéra Comique, Paris, Tuesday 17 February 2009 Conductor: Alejo Perez. Production and choreography: Ushio Amagatsu. Sets: Natsuyuki Nakanishi. Costumes: Masatomo Ota. Lady Sarashina: Mary Plazas. Trio of singers: Peter Bording, Ilse Eerens, Salomé Kammer. Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Lyon. A cliché it most certainly is, but it is awful how time flies. My blog starts in March 2003, but Eötvös’s Tri Sestry isn’t on it, which means it’s already over 6 years since I saw it. It was because I still had such good, clear memories of it that I was happy this season (as part of my policy always to take at least some of the contemporary stuff on offer, except the dreaded Saariaho) to book tickets to Lady Sarashina at the Opéra Comique. Eötvös’s fourth opera, like Tri Sestry commissioned by Lyon and directed by Ushio Amagatsu, is in nine tableaux, based on as many fragments of an 11th-century Japanese biography-cum-travelogue called As I Crossed The Bridge Of Dreams or, more or less, Mrs ...

ONP Bastille, Wednesday Janary 28 2009 Conductor: Hartmut Haenchen. Production: Martin Kušej. Sets: Martin Zehetgruber. Costumes Heide Kastler: Lighting: Reinhard Traub. Boris Timofeyevich Ismailov: Vladimir Vaneev. Zinoviy Borisovich Ismailov: Ludovit Ludha. Katerina Lvovna Ismailova: Eva-Maria Westbroek. Sergei: Michael König. Aksinya; the female convict: Carole Wilson. The shabby oaf: Alexander Kravets. Sonietka: Lani Poulson. A schoolmaster: Valentin Jar. A priest: Alexander Vassiliev. The chief of police Nikita Storojev. Opéra national de Paris Orchestra and Chorus. Photo: A.T.Schaefer It's remarkable, a friend said to me as we left the Bastille the other evening, how in the last 20 years Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk , previously little-known here, has become a popular smash hit. The ticket touts were out at the metro exits and the house was full, though unfortunately of merciless coughers. This is the ONP's second production. The first, André Engel's, is most often remembe...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday January 18 2009 Conductor: Paul Daniel. Production: Deborah Warner. Sets: Tom Pye. Costumes: Chloë Obolensky. Lighting: Jean Kalman. Choreography: Kim Brandstrup. Gustav von Aschenbach: John Graham-Hall. Traveller, Elderly Fop, Old Gondolier, Hotel Manager, Hotel Barber, Leader of the Players, Voice of Dionysus: Andrew Shore. Voice of Apollo: William Towers. Hotel Porter: Peter Van Hulle. Strawberry Seller: Anna Dennis. Strolling Player: Donal Byrne. Lace Seller: Constance Novis. Glass Maker: Richard Edgar-Wilson. Beggar Woman: Madeleine Shaw. English Clerk: Jonathan Gunthorpe. Restaurant Waiter: Benoît De Leersnyder. Guide in Venice: Charles Johnston. La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra & Chorus. Photo: Alistair Muir No wonder Deborah Warner’s ENO production of Death in Venice , now showing in Brussels, has been described in the press as a triumph and said to have “dazzled” Belgian opera-goers. It is a model of no-nonsense stagecraft and one of the most...

Châtelet, Paris, Tuesday December 30 2008 Conductor: Samuel Jean. Production: Jude Kelly. Choreography: Stephen Mear. Sets & costumes: Robert Jones. Lighting: Mark Henderson. Ozzie: Tim Howar. Chip: Adam Garcia. Gabey: Joshua Dallas. Ivy Smith: Sarah Soetart. Hildy Esterhazy: Caroline O’Connor. Claire de Loone: Lucy Schaufer. Madame Maude P. Dilly: Sheila Reid. Juge Pitkin W. Bridgework: Jonathan Best. Diana Dream/Dolores Dolores: Alison Jiear. Chorus of the Châtelet. Orchestre Pasdeloup. Our last show of the 2007-2008 season was a musical: Bernstein's On The Town , in the English National Opera's Jude Kelly production. I hope I've got the cast and conductor right above, as bizarrely I couldn't find any information of the kind on the theatre's web site, nor could a friend with access to their press releases. As we've all agreed I'm not the best-placed person to write up musicals, I'll be brief. Stephen Mear's skeletal sets of rust-red struts and ...

A few more quotes picked up while reading customer reviews on Amazon. Capitalization, punctuation and spelling are as was. He sang with such clarity and purity and made such a simple opening very moving. And the bagpipes were unexpectedly a very nice instrumentation for the piece. This man has THE most amazing voice! Until Alfie, I thought no one could match the great Pavoratti!  The duets with J Lo and the deceased Edith Pilaf are especially good. I didn't think too much of this CD but confess I bought it for the track " Time to Say Goodbye" as I am preparing the music for my funeral service and I would like to go through the curtains to this one!!  Disappointed! No challenge. The same tempi and the same mood with a huge tutti at the end with a cheap modulation. Sorry, don't take it negative! The listener can feel it and embrace it without relying on pesky words and literal translations, which brings a whole new level to music listening. All of the...

La Monnaie, Sunday December 9 2008 Conductor: Adam Fischer. Production: Stefan Herheim. Sets: Heike Scheele. Costumes: Gesine Völlm. Lighting: Wolfgang Göbbel. Video: fettFilm Berlin. Rusalka: Michaela Kaune. Prince: Ludovit Ludha. Sprite: Frode Olsen. Jezibaba: Livia Budai. Foreign Princess: Anda-Louise Bogza. Hunter/Priest: Julian Hubbard. Wood Nymphs: Olesya Golovneva, YoungHee Kim, Nona Javakhidze. La Monnaie Chorus and Symphony Orchestra. Stefan Herheim’s Rusalka , in Brussels, must be one of the busiest productions I’ve ever seen. The curtain rose on a set that was, by today’s standards, unusually realistic: a Brussels street corner: typical Brussels-style, cocoa-coloured brick houses with tall, narrow doors and windows, wrought iron balconies and satellite dishes; a 50s ice cream parlour to the left, topped with a cone and a neon sign; a graffiti’d metro entrance with a flower seller; a neo-gothic church with a rose window; a tall weeping willow, a column displaying poste...