We left at the interval...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday February 08 2026 Conductor: Alain Altinoglu. Production and sets: Thaddeus Strassberger. Costumes: Giuseppe Palella. Lighting: Driscoll Otto. Videos: Greg Emetaz. Benvenuto Cellini: John Osborn. Giacomo Balducci: Tijl Faveyts. Fieramosca: Jean-Sébastien Bou. Le Pape Clément VII: Ante Jerkunica. Francesco: Luis Aguilar. Bernardino: Leander Carlier. Pompeo: Gabriele Nani. Cabaretier: Yves Saelens. Teresa: Ruth Iniesta. Ascanio: Florence Losseau. La Monnaie Orchestra and Chorus. La Monnaie youth choir. Photos: Simon Van Rompay/La Monnaie The last time I saw Benevenuto Cellini , it was in Terry Gilliam’s production at the Bastille , in 2018. It was busy. I quote: ‘For the first time ever in my opera-going career, as far as I can remember, I had the unlikely and illogical feeling that the music was drowned in the action, crowded out, overwhelmed…’ In other words, it was ‘Hugely busy, overwhelmingly and distractingly and unnecessarily busy, like some gigantic, hi...

Théâtre des Champs Elysées (TCE), Paris Wednesday November 6 2025 Conductor: Jakob Lehmann. Production, sets, and costumes: Silvia Costa, assisted by Laura Ketels, Ama Tomberli, Simon Hatab, Michele Taborelli. Lighting: Marco Giusti. Faust: Benjamin Bernheim. Marguerite: Victoria Karkacheva. Méphistophélès: Christian Van Horn. Brander: Thomas Dolié. Les Siècles orchestra. Radio France chorus and children's choir. Photos: Vincent Pontet Silvia Costa has been around long enough, assisting Romeo Castellucci and directing films, plays and operas herself, to have won an artistic knighthood in France as a ‘Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres’, but this Damnation was my first experience of her work, and proved baffling. As with Shirin Neshat’s recent Aida , I’ll start by outlining the production, as its weaknesses impacted the musical side of the evening. This bald outline should also give those not present an insight into why , without preparation, I found the staging baffling, but of cou...

ONP Bastille, Tuesday February 12 2019 Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Production and sets: Dmitri Tcherniakov. Costumes: Elena Zaytseva. Lighting: Gleb Filshtinsky. Cassandre: Stéphanie d'Oustrac. Ascagne: Michèle Losier. Hécube: Véronique Gens. Énée: Brandon Jovanovich. Chorèbe: Stéphane Degout. Panthée: Christian Helmer. Le Fantôme d'Hector: Thomas Dear. Priam: Paata Burchuladze. Un Capitaine Grec: Jean-Luc Ballestra. Helenus: Jean-François Marras. Polyxène: Sophie Claisse. Didon: Ekaterina Semenchuk. Anna: Aude Extrémo. Iopas: Cyrille Dubois. Hylas: Bror Magnus Tødenes. Narbal: Christian Van Horn. Deux Capitaines troyens: Jean-Luc Ballestra, Tomislav Lavoie. Mercure: Bernard Arrieta. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. Talking about Les Troyens the other day, a colleague remarked that none of the Paris Opera’s new productions under Stéphane Lissner’s management have been outstandingly successful. As usual (though the phenomenon continues to puzzle me) t...

ONP Bastille, Monday March 26 2018 Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Production: Terry Gilliam with Leah Hausman. Choreography: Leah Hausman. Sets: Terry Gilliam, Aaron Marsden. Costumes: Katrina Lindsay. Lighting: Paule Constable. Video: Finn Ross. Benvenuto Cellini: John Osborn. Giacomo Balducci: Maurizio Muraro. Fieramosca: Audun Iversen. Le Pape Clément VII: Marco Spotti. Francesco: Vincent Delhoume. Bernardino: Luc Bertin-Hugault. Pompeo: Rodolphe Briand. Cabaretier: Se-Jin Hwang. Teresa: Pretty Yende. Ascanio: Michèle Losier. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. People who go to the cinema will know better than I what Terry Gilliam's work looks like - his visual identity. I did once see Brazil on TV, or parts of it at any rate, and hated every second. From what I've read, however, it would seem this production of Benvenuto Cellini is more like his Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and certainly in some respects the visuals were reminiscent of the animate...

Palais de la Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday April 3 2016 Conductor: Samuel Jean. Production: Richard Brunel. Sets: Anouk Dell'Aiera. Costumes: Claire Risterucci. Lighting: Laurent Castaingt. Don Pedro: Frédéric Caton. Claudio: Etienne Dupuis. Bénédict: Julien Dran. Don Juan: Sébastien Dutrieux. Léonato: Pierre Barrat. Héro: Sophie Karthäuser. Béatrice: Michèle Losier. Samarone: Lionel Lhote. Ursule: Eve-Maud Hubeaux. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie. Berlioz I like directors who set you thinking, which is why Tcherniakov and Warlikowski are favourites. I'm less keen when a director decides to "improve" a work by rewriting and reordering it to suit his own ideas. Richard Brunel seems to have found Béatrice et Bénédict a bit too frothy and fun, and decided it should be grimmer and that Samarone should play a bigger, blacker role. It had never occurred to me before, though it now seems obvious, that this is easy to do when a work has spoken dialogues. You can cha...

ONP Bastille, Friday December 11 2015 Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Director and sets: Alvis Hermanis. Costumes: Christine Neumeister. Lighting: Gleb Filshtinsky. Video: Katrina Neiburga. Marguerite: Sophie Koch. Faust: Jonas Kaufmann. Méphistophélès: Bryn Terfel. Brander: Edwin Crossley-Mercer. Voix céleste: Sophie Claisse. Paris Opera Orchestra and Chorus. Maîtrise des Hauts-de-Seine and Paris Opera Children's Chorus. Berlioz One of the reasons I started writing about everything I saw - productions and singers - was just to recall it, as I often found I couldn't. Alvis Hermanis's production (great name, Alvis: conjures up memories of stylish, sporty cars, many years ago) should, however, be easy to remember, as it features Stephen Hawking in his electrically-driven chair. It has also led to memorable, near-historic levels of booing, heckling and exchanged insults, even during the show, forcing Philippe Jordan to intervene from time to time to quieten people down. S...

Bozar, Brussels, Sunday December 21 2014 Conductor: Ludovic Morlot. Vierge Marie: Stéphanie d'Oustrac. Saint-Joseph: Lionel Lhote. Hérode: Paul Gay. Le père de famille / Polydorus: Frédéric Caton. Le récitant / Centurion: Yves Saelens. Orchestra & Chorus of La Monnaie, Reflection Vocal Ensemble, La Monnaie Children’s Choir. Pendant dix ans Marie, et Joseph avec elle / Virent fleurir en lui la sublime douceur, / La tendresse infinie / A la sagesse unie. Berlioz trying to stay awake “Sagesse” is probably not a word you’d usually apply to Berlioz, whose music is always full of surprises, often quite startling ones; but “sublime douceur” and “tendresse infinie” seem to sum up well the score of L’Enfance du Christ , one of his milder efforts. Sunday afternoon’s performance at the Bozar in Brussels showed little sign of conductor, Ludovic Morlot having recently stated: "I can only note that the orchestra and I have not succeeded in sharing a common artistic visio...

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, Sunday July 8 2012 Conductor: Antonio Pappano. Production: David McVicar. Sets: Es Devlin. Costumes: Moritz Junge. Lighting: Wolfgang Göbbel. Choreography: Andrew George. Cassandre: Anna Antonacci. Chorèbe: Fabio Capitanucci. Enée: Bryan Hymel. Didon: Eva-Maria Westbroek. Narbal: Brindley Sherratt. Anna: Hanna Hipp. Ascagne: Barbara Senator. Priam: Robert Lloyd. Hécube: Pamela Helen Stephen. Ghost of Hector: Jihoon Kim. Panthée: Ashley Holland. Hélénus: Ji Hyun Kim. Greek Captain: Lukas Jakobski. Trojan Soldier: Daniel Grice. Iopas: Ji-Min Park. First Soldier: Adrian Clarke. Second Soldier: Jeremy White. Hylas: Ed Lyon. Royal Opera Chorus and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. I’d intended this season to go out with a bang. To get tickets for Les Troyens with Kaufmann, Antonacci and Westbroek in the new, McVicar production, I pulled out all the stops. Against all odds, as I’ve never actually liked the place, I became a "Friend of ...

Opéra Comique, Paris, Friday April 15 2011 Conductor: Sir John Eliot Gardiner. Production: Dan Jemmett. Sets: Dick Bird. Costumes: Sylvie Martin-Hyszka. Lighting: Arnaud Jung. Agathe: Sophie Karthäuser. Max: Andrew Kennedy. Annette: Virginie Pochon. Gaspard: Gidon Saks. Kouno: Matthew Brook. L’Ermite: Luc Bertin-Hugault. Kilian: Samuel Evans. Ottokar: Robert Davies. Samiel: Christian Pelissier. The Monteverdi Choir. Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique. There are fashions in music and opera, and though we all know it well from recordings, Freischütz has become a rarity in the theatre these days, perhaps because of the supernatural elements in the plot. In over thirty years of opera-going, I had previously seen it just once, in an amusing, over-the-top Okotoberfest kind of production at the Châtelet. The Opéra Comique, which gets better and better, has brought it back in a still rarer form, the French version prepared by Berlioz, with recitatives and a ballet ( Invitation to the ...

Théatre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Friday October 27 2006 Conductor: Sir Colin Davis. Isabelle Cals, mezzo-soprano. Pavol Breslik, tenor. Kyle Ketelsen, bass-baritone. Orchestre National de France. Chorus of Radio France. Last week’s Berlioz binge continued with the indefinable Roméo et Juliette . The orchestre national was on cracking form under Sir Colin Davis. From the very start, it was plain from his laid-back stance and economic, matter-of-fact gestures that Sir Colin was totally in charge, and plain that the orchestra were determined to enjoy themselves – it’s rare to see them smiling and swaying along to the music like that. The strings were crisp and fresh yet tender, like rose petals, and played perfectly together (it doesn’t go without saying). The woodwind band was gorgeous as usual, and the brass were unusually firm and ripe. The Radio France chorus was sumptuous as ever, though you couldn’t tell a word they were singing. And we had three very decent soloists, thou...

ONP Bastille, Tuesday October 24 2006 Conductor: Sylvain Cambreling. Production: Herbert Wernicke, staged by Tine Buyse. Cassandre: Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet. Ascagne: Gaële Le Roi. Hécube: Anne Salvan. Enée: Jon Ketilsson. Chorèbe: Franck Ferrari. Panthée: Nicolas Testé. Le fantôme d’Hector: Philippe Fourcade. Priam: Nikolai Didenko. Un capitaine grec: Frédéric Caton. Helenus: Bernard Richter. Andromaque: Dörte Lyssewski. Polyxène: Carole Noizet. Dido: Yvonne Naef. Anna: Elena Zaremba. Iopas: Eric Cutler. Hylas: Bernard Richter. Narbal: Kwangchul Youn. Deux capitaines troyens: Nikolai Didenko, Frédéric Caton. Mercure: Nicolas Testé. The Bastille’s current production, brought in from Salzburg, is monumental in many respects. For a start, it has been presented as a “monument” to the late Herbert Wernicke, whose work it originally was. Second, it is monumental in style: one big set, grand gestures, broad strokes and bold images (not always good ones). And third, the performance, ra...

Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, Wednesday March 1 2006 Frederica von Stade, Anna Caterina Antonacci, Vladimir Chernov. Fanny Ardant (narrator). David Harper (piano), David Watkin (‘cello). Staging by Lotfi Mansouri and Paul Paradis. "Fanny Ardant is wearing a dress from Christian Dior Haute Couture, designed specially for her by John Galliano." The evening’s concept was a staged recital of songs by Pauline Viardot, but also by her father and friends: Rossini, Gounod, Meyerbeer, Chopin and Berlioz. On the left, a black Second-Empire throne on a podium; on the right, a black and gold Japanned screen and three matching Second-Empire chairs for the singers; in the middle, a grand piano; at the rear, a dark backdrop with three reddish, arched shapes cast by dramatic spotlights. Fanny Ardant hosted the evening. Actressy, arch and artificial, over-powdered and over-dressed, she laboured through a biography of Pauline Viardot, clumsily scripted to sound improvised. The audience murmured ...