We left at the interval...

ONP Bastille, Tuesday June 20 2023 Conductor: Carlo Rizzi. Production: Thomas Jolly. Sets: Bruno de Lavenère. Costmes: Sylvie Dequest. Lighting: Antoine Travert. Choreography: Josépha Madoki. Fights: Ran Arthur Braun. Juliette: Elsa Dreisig. Roméo: Benjamin Bernheim. Frère Laurent: Jean Teitgen. Capulet: Laurent Naouri. Stephano: Lea Desandre. Gertrude: Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo. Mercutio: Huw Montague Rendall. Mercutio: Florian Sempey. Benvolio: Thomas Ricart. Tybalt: Maciej Maciej Kwaśnikowski. Pâris: Sergio Villegas Galvain. Gregorio: Yiorgo Ioannou. Le Duc de Vérone: Jérôme Boutellier. Manuela: So-Hee Lee. Pepita: Izabella Wnorowska-Pluchart. Angelo: Vincent Morell. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. Photos : Vincent Pontet/ONP     Roméo et Juliette is the fourth of Thomas Jolly's opera productions I've attended (the others were Eliogabalo in 2016, Fantasio in 2017, and Dusapin's Macbeth Underworld in Brussels in 2019), and a kind of 'team style...

La Monnaie at Bozar, Brussels, Sunday March 24 2013 Conductor: Evelino Pidò. Juliette: Nino Machaidze. Stéphano: Angélique Noldus. Gertrude: Carole Wilson. Roméo: John Osborn. Tybalt: Tansel Akzeybek. Benvolio: Stefan Cifolelli. Mercutio: Lionel Lhote. Le Comte Pâris: Alexandre Duhamel. Grégorio: Nabil Suliman. Le Comte Capulet: Paul Gay. Frère Laurent: Jérôme Varnier. Le Duc de Vérone: Patrick Bolleire. Manuela: Amalia Avilán. Pepita: Kinga Borowska. Angelo: Marc Coulon. Frère Jean: Pascal Macou. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie. Vlaams Radio Koor. Reflection. Concert performance There’s a certain kind of opera classed in my mind alongside Massenet’s Esclarmonde . Works, that is, that need top-rate performances to, well, work. Joan Sutherland’s famous recording of Esclarmonde does; an Esclarmonde put on by the local amateur operatic society on a shoestring budget probably wouldn’t. At the Opéra Comique some years back, it was decidedly unconvincing. The risk, with a superla...

ONP Bastille, Wednesday October 19, 2011 Conductor: Alain Altinoglu. Production: Jean-Louis Martinoty. Sets: Johan Engels. Costumes: Yan Tax. Lighting: Fabrice Kebour. Faust: Roberto Alagna. Méphistophélès: Paul Gay. Valentin: Tassis Christoyannis. Wagner: Alexandre Duhamel. Marguerite: Inva Mula. Siebel: Angélique Noldus. Dame Marthe: Marie-Ange Todorovitch. “Faust II”: Rémy Corazza.  Orchestra and chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. “Mr. Martinoty's solution is wretched excess: an immense library-cum-mad-science lab with a giant crucifix looming above, an older actor lip-synching Mr. Alagna's aged Faust, Mr. Alagna popping out of a space-age sphere in a gold T-shirt after the devilish deal, a huge chorus in a costume mashup that includes Enlightenment academics, Foreign Legionnaires, Second Empire soldiers, beauty contestants in bathing suits, peasant girls in Dutch bonnets, a humongous skeleton in a flurry of rainbow streamers, and carnival maskers part African-part...

ONP Garnier, Wednesday October 7 2009 Conductor: Marc Minkowski. Production: Nicolas Joel. Sets: Ezio Frigerio. Costumes: Franca Squarciapino. Mireille: Inva Mula. Vincent: Charles Castronovo. Ourrias: Franck Ferrari. Ramon: Alain Vernhes. Taven: Sylvie Brunet. Vincenette: Anne-Catherine Gillet. Orchestra and chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. Nicolas Joel's production of Mireille left me with no wish ever to see or hear the work again, so what a thankless task it must be for a perfectly decent cast to slog through it ten times without any help from the director, and with only resounding boos on the opening night and tepid applause since as their reward. By mid-series, the orchestra played and the singers sang as if they'd long since wished they'd never got involved. The work itself needed help too if it were to succeed ( Mireille ends in a mawkish orgy of Catholic Kitsch; the score, meanwhile, had me wondering if I hadn't always underrated Arthur Sullivan), ...

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 ...