We left at the interval...

ONP Bastille, Tuesday January 31 2012 Conductor: Dimitri Jurowski. Production: Lev Dodin. Sets: David Borovsky. Costumes: Chloe Obolensky. Lighting: Jean Kalman. Hermann: Vladimir Galouzine. Tomsky: Evgeny Nikitin. Prince Yeletsky: Ludovic Tézier. Chekalinsky: Martin Mühle. Surin: Balint Szabo. Countess: Larissa Diadkova. Lisa: Olga Guryakova. Polina: Varduhi Abrahamyan. Masha: Nona Javakhidze. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. Children’s choirs of the Hauts-de-Seine and the Opéra National de Paris. The ever-excellent Opera Cake blog is not alone in noting that at the Paris Opera these days, only reruns of old productions are any good (though not all of those). This is the fourth outing of Lev Dodin’s staging of La Dame de Pique in Paris, and a good one it is (better, thank goodness, than his Salome , which has already been ditched), so it’s surprising it still manages to get booed on opening night, when the man himself is there too boo at. It comes as welcom...

La Monnaie, Brussels – January 30 2005 Conductor: Daniele Callegari. Production: Richard Jones. Sets & costumes: John Macfarlane. Hermann: Vitali Taraschenko. Tomsky: Tómas Tómasson. Prince Yeletsky: Vladimir Chernov. The Countess: Nina Romanova. Lisa: Tatiana Monogarova. Pauline: Marina Domashenko. Chekalinsky: Lorenzo Caròla. Surin: Nabil Suliman. Chaplitsky: Marc Coulon. Narumov: Shadi Torbey. Major Domo: André Grégoire. Governess: Beata Morawska. Masha: Elise Gäbele. The fall of iron-curtain communism may not have done wonders for the German economy, but it has certainly given opera a shot in the arm, releasing a seemingly endless supply of excellent singers. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the cast of Pikovaya Dama in Brussels was every bit as good as Gergiev’s on his Philips recording, though only one was actually in it (Chernov. In Brussels, Chernov and Taraschenko were the only two names I knew). However, I think some aspects of the production occasionally r...