We left at the interval...

ONP Palais Garnier, Tuesday December 10 2024 An edited version of t his post will be published on Parterre.com Conductor: Susanna Mälkki. Production and lighting: Olivier Py. Sets and Costumes: Pierre-André Weitz. Tom Rakewell: Ben Bliss. Nick Shadow: Iain Paterson. Trulove: Clive Bayley. Ann Trulove: Golda Schultz. Mother Goose: Justina Gringytė. Baba the Turk: Jamie Barton. Sellem: Rupert Charlesworth. Keeper of the madhouse: Vartan Gabrielian. Voices from the crowd: Ayumi Ikehata, Frédéric Guieu. Solo voice: Laurent Laberdesque. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.  Photos: Guergana Damianova/OnP After playing thoroughly modern Millie, seeing (and struggling to write up) three new works in succession, I was back on more familiar ground this week with The Rake’s Progress at the Palais Garnier. The production isn’t new: it was Olivier Py’s first opera for Paris, in 2008, and it returned in 2012. But for some reason, it had escaped my attention till this seaso...

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Wednesday March 15 2023 Conductor: François-Xavier Roth. Production: Olivier Py. Sets and Costumes: Pierre-André Weitz. Lighting: Bertrand Killy. Le Rossignol Le Rossignol: Sabine Devieilhe. Le Pêcheur / 1er émissaire japonais: Cyrille Dubois. La cuisinière: Chantal Santon Jeffery. Le chambellan: Laurent Naouri. Le bonze: Victor Sicard. 3e émissaire japonais: Rodolphe Briand. 2e émissaire japonais: Francesco Salvadori. Empereur de Chine: Jean-Sébastien Bou. La mort: Lucile Richardot. Les Mamelles de Tirésias Thérèse-Tirésias / La Cartomancienne: Sabine Devieilhe. Le Directeur de théâtre: Laurent Naouri. Le mari: Jean-Sébastien Bou. Le gendarme: Victor Sicard. Le Journaliste parisien / Monsieur Lacouf: Cyrille Dubois. Le Fils / Une grosse dame: Rodolphe Briand. Une dame élégante: Chantal Santon Jeffery. La Marchande de journaux: Lucile Richardot. Monsieur Presto: Francesco Salvadori. Les Siècles, Ensemble Aedes. Photo: Vincent Pontet, TCE ' Perfo...

State Academic Bolshoi Theatre named after Alisher Navoi, Tashkent, Friday May 24 2019 Conductor: Bobomurod Khudaykulov. Choreography: Michel Fokine, recreated by Andris Liepa and Igor Pivorovich. Sets and Costumes: Léon Bakst, Aleksandr Golovin, Natalia Goncharova, recreated by Anatoly Nezhny, Elena Netsvetaeva. Orchestra, Soloists and Ballet of the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre named after Alisher Navoi Part of the legacy of Russian and later Soviet domination of Uzbekistan until the declaration of independence in 1991 is the possibility, on almost any evening, to see an opera or ballet at the State Academic Bolshoi Theatre in Tashkent. In May this year, for example, you could see Aleko, La Bohème, Aida, The Czar's Bride or Iolanta , or, if a ballet fan, La Bayadère, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, Don Quixote or the aptly-named Nutcracker , as well as concerts and other performances by local and visiting artistes. Tashkent, 6,000 km from western Europe but only 600 from C...

Le Studio - Philharmonie, Paris, Sunday 27 January 2018 Actor/narrator: Eric Ruf. Dancer: Alban Richard. Soloists of the Orchestre de Paris and the Ensemble Intercontemporain. When I was a teenager, on one of my first forays abroad, I had the good fortune to be invited to stay with a cultivated Swiss family in Lausanne, who opened up intriguing new worlds for me. They had real paintings, parquet floors, oriental rugs, a grand piano, and what they called their salon de l’art brut , a spare room kept empty but for their own improvised artworks. They introduced me to the first opera I ever knew and owned on record, Les Mamelles de Tirésias, which would later play a part in my getting into university, as I talked about Apollinaire's play when discussing the theatre of the absurd during my entrance interview. They also introduced me to Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat , the words to which the whole family seemed able to chant merrily by heart while it was on their gramophone, (wh...

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Wednesday November 9 2016 Conductor: Yuri Temirkanov. Piano: Boris Berezovsky. Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra.  Rachmaninoff: Concerto for piano No. 3 op. 30. Stravinsky:   The Rite of Spring I like Yuri Temirkanov very much. His conducting is precise and matter-of-fact and undemonstrative, his gestures, when he makes any at all, are restrained and however agitated the score may get there’s no mad arm-waving or wild writhing around on the podium. His face gives little away. The sound he cultivates is relatively dry and restrained as well: no lush wallowing, some quite daring tempi, and, though his orchestra could, if asked to, play extremely loud, no absolute extremes of loudness, even in a piece like Le Sacre . He comes across as having almost a kind of scientific detachment, as if conducting constructivist ballets, seemingly giving equal weight to all parts. As a result, you hear inner harmonies and details you never...

Staatsoper Unter den Linden im Schiller Theater, Berlin, Thursday March 14 2013 Conductor: David Robert Coleman. Production: Krzysztof Warlikowski. Sets and costumes: Małgorzata Szczęśniak. Lighting: Felice Ross. Video: Denis Guéguin. Trulove: Jan Martiník. Anne: Adriana Kucerová. Tom Rakewell: Stephan Rügamer. Nick Shadow: Gidon Saks. Mother Goose: Birgit Remmert. Baba the Turk: Nicolas Ziélinski. Sellem: Erin Caves. Keeper of the madhouse: Gyula Orendt. Staatskapelle Berlin. Staatsopernchor. Stravinsky This production of The Rake’s Progress was covered so well and in such depth by Opera Cake in 2010 that it hardly seems necessary for me to add anything, other than that I had a partly different cast. It can't have been easy for Opera Cake : once again, Krzysztof Warlikowski's production was typically... What's the word? A web? A tapestry? Kaleidoscopic? Whatever the word is for involving a profusion of ideas and details, themes, images, symbols, actions, a...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday May 6 2007 Conductor: Kazushi Ono. Production: Robert Lepage, with Ex Machina, Quebec . Anne Trulove: Laura Claycomb. Tom Rakewell: Andrew Kennedy. Nick Shadow: William Shimell. Mother Goose: Julianne Young. Baba the Turk: Dagmar Peckova. Trulove: Darren Jeffery. Sellem: Donal Byrne. Keeper of the Madhouse: Shadi Torbey. Orchestr and chorus of La Monnaie. Unusually, the Financial Times published a reader’s rebuttal of its reviewer’s complaints that the singers in Brussels ’ new production of The Rake’s Progress were often faint and that the production might have been more original and better-handled. Well, I was there yesterday, and I can see the critic’s point. For a start, to keep things perfectly objective, my neighbour, not herself an FT reader, spontaneously opined at the interval that Andrew Kennedy “might really be not bad at all, but I can’t hear him.” She also spontaneously compared this production to Robert Carsen’s Paris Candide – which also to...

Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris: October 21 and 22 2004 October 21: Pierre Boulez, Livre pour cordes ; Gustav Mahler, Symphony N°7 October 22: Pierre Boulez, Dérive 2 ; Igor Stravinsky, Symphonies d’instruments à vent, Le Sacre du printemps . What can I say ? Boulez isn’t a composer I listen to at home, and though I don’t find half an hour of his music “difficult,” the rhythmic complexity and rapid pace make it hard for me to decipher and therefore hard to criticise. The Livre pour cordes left no impression on me; Dérive 2 had more impact and certainly the eleven LSO players involved put a great deal of skill and effort into making a success of its waves of sound and driving energy. Boulez Why is it sometimes suggested the LSO is now below world-class? Maybe my judgment has been clouded by long years in France, where orchestras sound as ad hoc as their members’ tenure is guaranteed, whether they play well or badly. The LSO played like a well-oiled English machine from the days when Bri...