Tag Archives: Dimitri Platanias
Posted on 1 December 2023
Cav and Pag may be old warhorses, but when given gripping productions with excellent singers they are thoroughly compelling. Both these productions at the Royal Opera do the trick, and under the baton of Daniel Oren both operas packed a huge emotional punch. See my review in The Article.
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Posted on 21 May 2019
In this hugely welcome revival of David McVicar’s 2015 production, the three greatest moments came in Act III: Sondra Radvanovsky’s terrific Mamma morta, Dimitri Platanias’s cri de coeur against the wrong turn the Revolution has taken, and Elena Zilio’s electrifying cameo about giving her grandson to fight and die for France. Roberto Alagna’s Chenier was less …
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Posted on 15 December 2017
If you can get past the wanton incoherence of the first scene in David McVicar’s darkly seedy production, this was a performance — dedicated to the late, much-missed Dmitri Hvorostovsky — of huge power and pathos. A philanderer and serial sex offender enjoying unlimited power molests numerous young women, inspiring shame and anger among their …
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Posted on 4 December 2015
Damiano Michieletto’s production of Rossini’s William Tell in June this year was widely panned, so I awaited his new production of Cav and Pag with some apprehension. I need not have. The gritty realism of Giovanni Verga’s 1880 short story Cavalleria Rusticana, later made into a play and taken up by the young composer Pietro …
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Posted on 30 March 2012
In Act III of this opera, Rigoletto takes his daughter Gilda to Sparafucile’s tavern to show her the Duke’s real nature. She hears him singing La donna è mobile, sees him having fun with Maddalena, and is shocked and heartbroken. Her father takes her home, sends her off to Verona, but … being too busy arranging the …
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