We left at the interval...

Opéra Comique, Paris, Monday May 16 2011 Conductor: William Christie. Production: Jean-Marie Villégier. Sets: Carlo Tommasi. Costumes: Patrice Cauchetier. Choreography: Francine Lancelot, Béatrice Massin. Lighting: Patrick Méeüs. Atys: Bernard Richter. Cybèle: Stéphanie d’Oustrac. Sangaride: Emmanuelle de Negri. Célénus: Nicolas Rivenq. Idas: Marc Mauillon. Doris: Sophie Daneman. Mélisse: Jaël Azzaretti. Le Sommeil: Paul Agnew. Morphée: Cyril Auvity. Le temps ; le fleuve Sangar: Bernard Deletré. Maître de la cérémonie / Alecton: Jean Charles di Zazzo. L’impresario: Olivier Collin. Flore: Elodie Fonnard. Iris: Rachel Redmond. Melpomène: Anna Reinhold. Zéphir: Francisco Fernández-Rueda. Zéphir: Reinoud Van Mechelen. Phobétor: Callum Thorpe. Compagnie Fêtes Galantes. Gil Isoart, dancer at the Opéra National de Paris. Chorus and Orchestra: Les Arts Florissants. First staged 25 years ago, this production of Atys , never forgotten, has achieved legendary status in France. In the early ...

Théâtre des Champs Elysées, Paris, Monday May 9 2011 Conductor: Christophe Rousset. Ann Hallenberg, mezzo soprano. Les Talens Lyriques. Works by Broschi, Johann-Christian Bach, Porpora, Giacomelli, Hasse and Leo To avoid a single, solemn ceremony, we were told in a speech at the start of this concert, when celebrating their twentieth anniversary, Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques have chosen to tour a beautifully crafted concert of 18th-century gems, including a generous (the unfortunate singer might well say gruelling) selection of arias composed for Farinelli, who – because of the film - played an important part in the group’s performing history. I’m not usually a great recital fan, either on disc or in concert, as I find a whole evening of arias a bit like eating a box of chocolates in one sitting. But in this case, having, for one reason or another, recently been mightily impressed by clips of Swedish mezzo Ann Hallenberg on YouTube (after recently being mightily...

[In concert] La Monnaie (Cirque Royal), Brussels, Saturday April 30 2011 Conductor: Julian Reynolds. Nabucco: Carlo Guelfi. Ismaele: Zoran Todorovich. Zaccaria: Carlo Colombara. Abigaille: Marianne Cornetti. Fenena: Catherine Keen. Il Gran Sacerdote: Kurt Gysen. Abdallo: Xavier Rouillon. Anna: Olga Kindler. Orchestra and Chorus of La Monnaie. La Monnaie no doubt had its reasons for scheduling Nabucco in concert, not staged; I haven’t taken the time to see if they were stated anywhere. But I don’t think it was a wise decision. Nabucco is far from being Verdi’s greatest work, whatever political resonance and advertising fame that dreary chorus may have acquired (OK, shoot me down in flames). Performing it in concert exposes the score and the singers and removes the support and distraction of the on-stage drama a work like this needs. I suspect, therefore, that last Saturday’s cast would have come across better in sets and costumes. Checking back, I see we’ve had several of the ...

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 ...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday April 10 2011 Conductor: Koen Kessels. Production: Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Sets and lighting: Jan Joris Lamers. Costumes: Tim Van Steenbergen. Hanako: Ingela Bohlin. Jitsuko Honda: Frederika Brillembourg. Yoshio: William Dazeley. La Monnaie chamber orchestra. Photo: Kaz Ishikawa It was interesting to have Hanjo so soon after Akhmatova . As I mentioned when writing up the latter, there has been little praise for Mantovani’s score, though I found it serviceable enough. Hosokawa's music is really something else: often (not always: there are plenty of drums, of different sizes, for times of drama) delicate and diaphanous, refined, subtle…sometimes infinitely quiet, quieter than any music we usually hear. So poor old Akhmatova seemed positively rustic and clodhopping in comparison. There’s little more musical “action” in Hanjo than in, say, L’Amour de Loin (though I must say at times it reminded me of Turn of the Screw or Death in Venice , only m...

I've never posted a link before but in this case... Ann Hallenberg - Scherza Infida And more... Ann Hallenberg - more Ariodante And more... Ann Hallenberg - still more

ONP Bastille, Thursday March 31 2011 Conductor: Pascal Rophé. Production: Nicolas Joel. Sets and costumes: Wolfgang Gussmann. Lighting: Hans Toelstede. Anna Akhmatova: Janina Baechle. Lev Goumilev: Attila Kiss-B. Nicolaï Pounine: Lionel Peintre. Lydia Tchoukovskaïa: Varduhi Abrahamyan. Faina Ranevskaïa: Valérie Condoluci. Le Représentant de L’Union des écrivains: Christophe Dumaux. Un Sculpteur, Un Universitaire anglais: Fabrice Dalis. Un agent: Ugo Rabec. Orchestra and chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. The professionals haven't given a warm welcome to Bruno Mantovani's new opera Akhmatova . French daily Le Figaro talks of a "pall of boredom" over the Bastille; Le Monde writes of the score's "thunderous vacuity" while the Financial Times says it's "gratuitously aggressive"; and Diapason is far from alone in labelling the libretto "banal." While the peerless FT 's integrity is unquestionable, I must say I wonder if ...