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Puccini - Tosca, at La Monnaie in Brussels

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La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday June 28 2026 Conductor: Jordan de Souza. Production & costumes: Rafael R. Villalobos. Sets: Emanuele Sinisi. Lighting: Felipe Ramos. Paintings: Santiago Ydáñez. Floria Tosca: Leah Hawkins. Mario Cavaradossi: Stefano La Colla. Il barone Scarpia: Lucio Gallo. Cesare Angelotti: Li Huanhong. Il sagrestano: Paolo Orecchia. Spoletta: Trystan Llŷr Griffiths. Sciarrone: Kamil Ben Hsaïn Lachiri. Un pastore: Pieter De Praetere. Un carceriere: René Laryea. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie. Photos: Pieter Claes, Karl Forster My last opera of the 25-26 season - assuming Rossini’s Le siège de Corinthe in Pesaro this coming August doesn’t count - was Rafael R. Villalobos’s production of Tosca , in Brussels. This isn’t new at La Monnaie, but when it first appeared there in 2021 it was - like this season’s Norma  as well - severely hit by Covid restrictions, and so attended by only a few. I’d previously only seen the director’s Hänsel und Gretel , or in this...
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Hans Krása - Brundibár, at the Opéra Comique in Paris

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Opéra Comique (Salle Favart), Paris, Sunday June 7, 2026 Programme: Janáček: Mládí (Youth) for wind ensemble. Poulenc: La bonne neige, De grandes cuillers de neige (from Un soir de neige ), O magnum mysterium (from Quatre motets pour le temps de Noël ). Jean-Claude Grumberg: De Pitchik à Pitchouk , a 'tale for old children'. Tino Rossi, arr. Brice Legée for five voices: Petit Papa Noël . Krása: Brundibár, incorporating… ... Ilse Weber: Ich wandre durch Theresienstadt .  Cast: Conductor: Louis Langrée. Production: Muriel Mayette-Holtz, Jean-Claude Berutti. Sets and costumes: Rudy Sabounghi. Lighting: François Thouret. Choreography: Christine Bonneton. Drawings: Louis Lavedan. Les Frivolités Parisiennes. Children of the Maîtrise Populaire de l'Opéra-Comique. Photos: Stefan Brion The dreadful history of Hans Krása’s Brundibár will be familiar to many, so I won’t expound on it for long in this post. Details are easy enough to find online. Krása was a Jewish composer in Czec...
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Antonia Bembo - Ercole Amante at the Opéra Bastille in Paris

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ONP Bastille, Paris, Tuesday June 2 2026 Conductor: Leonardo García-Alarcón. Production, sets, costumes, video: Netia Jones. Lighting: Ellen Ruge. Choreography: Maud Le Pladec. Ercole: Andreas Wolf. Giunone: Julie Fuchs. Iole: Ana Vieira Leite. Dejanira: Deepa Johnny. Licco: Marcel Beekman. Hyllo: Alasdair Kent. Venere, Bellezza: Sandrine Piau. Paggio: Théo Imart. Pasithea: Teona Todua. Nettuno, L'Ombra di Eutyro: Alex Rosen. Una grazia: Danaé Monnié. Grazie: Giulia Fichu-Sampieri, Dina Husseini. Mercure: Samuel Desguin. Cappella Mediterranea. Chœur de Chambre de Namur. Photos: Bernd Uhlig/Opéra national de Paris Another long article, I’m afraid, but with a virtually unknown work by a virtually unknown composer, it’s hard to avoid… Antonia Bembo was born in Venice in 1640 or thereabouts, and studied there with Cavalli. But in the 1670s, she fled with her children to France to escape a husband who, when not neglectful, was abusive. Her singing won her the protection, including a pen...
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Iain Bell - Medusa, at La Monnaie in Brussels

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La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday May 17 2026 Conductor: Michiel Delanghe. Libretto and production: Lydia Steier. Sets: Flurin Borg Madsen. Costumes: Katharina Schlipf. Lighting: Elana Siberski. Medusa: Claudia Boyle. Euryale: Paula Murrihy. Stheno: Angela Denoke. Perseus: Josh Lovell. Poseidon: Konstantin Gorny. Athena: Mary Elizabeth Williams. High Priestess: Anu Komsi. Danaë: Marie-Juliette Ghazarian. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie. Photos: © Simon Van Rompay   I’m going to waffle a bit at the start of this post. If you just want to know about the production or the singing and playing, skip or scroll down…’  I remember once, when I was a kid in England, there was some Beethoven on the radio; piano music, probably a concerto, and at one point, perhaps during a cadenza, Beethoven stripped the score right down to single notes played with one finger. ‘That’s not very hard,’ said my mother, drying a dish. Clearly, Beethoven needed to pull his socks up. A friend of mine, an amateu...
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Cavalli - La Calisto, at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées (TCE), Paris

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Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Wednesday May 6 2026 Conductor: Sébastien Daucé. Production: Jetske Mijnssen. Sets: Julia Katharina Berndt. Choreography: Dustin Klein. Costumes: Hannah Clark. Lighting: Matthew Richardson. Calisto: Lauranne Oliva. Endimione: Paul-Antoine Bénos-Djian. Giove/Giove-Diana: Milan Siljanov. Giunone/Eternita: Anna Bonitatibus. Diana: Sun-Ly Pierce. Linfea: Zachary Wilder. Natura/Pane/Furia: Petr Nekoranec. Mercurio: Dominic Sedgwick. Destino/Satirino/Furia: Paul Figuier. Silvano/Furia: José Coca Loza. Ensemble Correspondances. Photos: Monika Ritterhaus, Laurent Guizard Dutch director Jetske Mijnssen’s production of Cavalli’s La Calisto , a work I last saw over thirty years ago (staged by Herbert Wernicke in Brussels), premiered last summer in Aix and has travelled to two or three French regional houses before arriving at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées - another example of the vitality and variety, against all odds, of opera in France’s regions. Mijnssen’s s...
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Glass - Satyagraha, at the Opéra Garnier in Paris

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Palais Garnier, Paris, Thursday April 16 2026 Conductor: Ingo Metzmacher. Production and choreography: Bobbi Jene Smith, Christian Friedländer. Sets: Wojciech Dziedzic. Costumes: John Torres. Lighting: Jacob Mallinson Bird. Countertenor: Anthony Roth Costanzo. Soprano: Ilanah Lobel-Torres. Baritone: Davóne Tines. Alto: Adriana Bignagni Lesca. Soprano: Olivia Boen. Mezzo-soprano: Deepa Johnny. Baritone: Amin Ahangaran. Tenor: Nicky Spence. Bass: Nicolas Cavallier. Dancers: Alexander Bozinoff, Lorrin Brubaker, Jeremy Coachman, Jonathan Fredrickson, Marion Gautier de Charnacé, Awa Joannais, Héloïse Jocqueviel, Payton Johnson, Rachel McNamee, Mermoz Melchior, Adrien Ouaki, Ido Toledano. Orchestra and Chorus Of the Opéra National de Paris. Photos: © Yonathan Kellerman (600th post on this blog.) ‘Je n’ai rien compris. Mais c’était sublime’ - I didn’t understand a thing, but it was sublime. So said a friend as we waited for the métro after Satyagraha . Overhearing him, a woman a few yards awa...
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