Tag Archives: Carlo Rizzi

Les Vêpres Siciliennes, Welsh National Opera, Cardiff, February 2020

Following his hat trick of Il Trovatore, Rigoletto and La Traviata, Verdi satisfied a Paris commission with this work about the Sicilian uprising in 1282. French grand opera did not really suit Verdi, and the libretto by Eugène Scribe was a hack job, but the music is largely wonderful — my review in The Article.

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Un ballo in maschera, Welsh National Opera, Cardiff, February 2019

With the Prince of Wales in attendance at David Pountney’s new production of Ballo, would it be the original late eighteenth century setting with the assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden, or America with no regicide and Riccardo as Governor of Boston? In the event it was neither, more nineteenth century Gothick with a …

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La Forza del destino, Welsh National Opera, WNO, Cardiff, February 2018

Fate, personified by a tall, elegant, funereal character, strikes the stage with a staff at the very start of this production, and after the Marquis of Calatrava’s accidental death the blood on the wall is a constant reminder to his daughter Leonora and her lover Don Alvaro of their inability to be reconciled with him …

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Moses in Egypt, Welsh National Opera, WNO, Cardiff, October 2014

Congratulations to WNO for staging a Rossini masterpiece that in its day “marked the final and complete emancipation of the bass singer … for the purposes of opera seria” (Francis Toye). Hitherto it had been conventional to restrict important bass roles to opera buffa, but here both Moses and Pharaoh are basses. The sacred theme …

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William Tell, Welsh National Opera, WNO, Cardiff, September 2014

For the first Milan production of this opera, after its earlier première in Paris, there was predictable trouble with the Austrian authorities. The scene with the apple was cut, the oppressors became the English, and Tell was William Wallace. How appropriate then that the WNO have given the first performance of David Pountney’s new production …

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Il Trovatore, Royal Opera, April 2009

This was a terrific performance, with Sondra Radvanovsky and Roberto Alagna in superb voice as Leonora and Manrico.

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