We left at the interval...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday May 24 2015 Conductor: Carlo Rizzi. Concept and Production: Àlex Ollé (La Fura dels Baus). Sets: Alfons Flores. Costumes: Lluc Castells. Lighting: Urs Schönebaum. Video: Emmanuel Carlier. Gustav III: Riccardo Massi. René Ankarström: Scott Hendricks. Amelia: Monica Zanettin. Ulrica Arfvidsson: Marie-Nicole Lemieux. Oscar: Ilse Eerens. Cristiano: Roberto Accurso. Ribbing: Tijl Faveyts. Horn: Carlo Cigni. Un Giudice: Zeno Popescu. Un Servo: Pierre Derhet. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie. Verdi meets censor This Ballo , involving a couple of interesting young singers, was musically quite satisfactory overall, and at times excellent. Scott Hendricks is a baritone I've admired at La Monnaie and the Bastille in the past. Yesterday his singing was fairly blustery (and he looked quite grumpy at the curtain calls), but that was alright, once his character had gone bad. Marie-Nicole Lemieux was as excellent an Ulrica as you'd expect: vocally sum...

ONP Bastille, Tuesday April 21 2009 Conductor: Renato Palumbo. Production: Gilbert Deflo. Riccardo: Ramon Vargas. Renato: Ludovic Tézier. Amelia: Deborah Voigt. Ulrica: Elena Manistina. Oscar: Anna Christy. Silvano: Etienne Dupuis. Sam: Michail Schelomianski. Tom: Scott Wilde. Orchestra and chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. This revival was not in my subscription this season, and as Un Ballo is not one of my favourites (I can do without the whole of act 1, and if Riccardo gets knifed at the end, Oscar should get shot at the outset) and this is not much of a production (described by me here ), I wouldn’t normally have bothered to get tickets. But Deborah Voigt is a singer I’ve admired since she sang a gobsmacking Chrysothemis in Paris’s awful former “blue-and-red” production of Elektra and the only one I’ve deliberately travelled far to hear: London for Die Frau , Vienna for Tristan , New York for Aida and Tosca (in memorably ghastly Met productions), not counting her Sent...

ONP Bastille, Tuesday July 10 2007 Conductor: Paul Weigold. Production: Gilbert Deflo. Riccardo: Marcelo Alvarez. Renato: Ludovic Tézier. Amelia: Angela Brown. Ulrica: Elena Manisitina. Oscar: Camilla Tilling. Silvano: Jean-Luc Ballestra. Sam: Michail Schelomianski. Tom: Scott Wilde. Giudice: Pascal Meslé. Servo d’Amelia: Nicolas Marie. “C’était pas mauvais, mais c’était ennuyeux”. “On reste sur sa faim”. Those two comments, heard after the show, just about sum up this disappointing end to our season. It was one of those evenings when a decent cast could have done a better job with a different conductor and director. I like my Verdi brisk, bouncy and with a certain bite to it – rawness, even. Paul Weigold played it like a late romantic chamber work: rounded sounds, languorous tempi , legato , rubato , all in all a sort of expansive soupiness (beautifully executed, notwithstanding) that at best brought to mind Mendelssohn, at worst Rachmaninov. There was no dramatic tension, no forward ...