Mainly Opera and Ballet
Of the four operas I saw in four days at Buxton, The Boatswain’s Mate by Ethel Smyth was the most fun. Like Haydn’s La Canterina this was really an operetta, both providing a delightful contrast to the blood and thunder of Verdi’s Ernani. Only Peter Brook’s take on Carmen seriously disappointed — see my review …
Bregenz, at one end of Lake Konstanz in Austria, hosts an opera festival every summer. This year on the vast Lake Stage, which plays to an Amphitheatre seating 6,800, they performed Madama Butterfly, and inside the auditorium Verdi’s Ernani. This was an early Verdi opera, once very popular, but later eclipsed by his middle period, …
After Verdi’s first four operas were premiered at La Scala, La Fenice in Venice commissioned the fifth, and the composer eventually plumped for Victor Hugo’s play Hernani, a drama on Castillian honour. The resulting opera Ernani may lack the irony and humour of the original play, but it supplies four glorious roles for soprano, tenor, baritone, and bass. Requiting Spanish honour leads to …
