Tag Archives: Anne Sophie Duprels

Edgar, Opera Holland Park, July 2024

Puccini’s first opera was Le Villi, and his third the very successful Manon Lescaut. The stepping stone between them was Edgar, a work that demonstrated the composer’s budding lyricism, but suffered from a weak libretto — see my review in The Article.

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Margot la Rouge, Le Villi, Opera Holland Park, July 2022

An evening of Italian verismo at Opera Holland Park provided a very effective production of two little known works. The first half featured Margot la Rouge an opera by Delius, not normally thought of as composing for this genre, and the second half of the evening included Puccini’s first stage work Le Villi. See my review in …

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Isabeau, Opera Holland Park, July 2018

Italian composer Pietro Mascagni never repeated the huge success of Cavalleria Rusticana, his first opera written at age 26, but he had a jolly good try — see my Telegraph review on 15 July 2018.

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Iris, Opera Holland Park, OHP, June 2016

Opera Holland Park staged Mascagni’s little-known Iris during their second season in 1997, but this production by Olivia Fuchs is entirely new. The opera itself premiered in 1898, eight years after Cavalleria Rusicana, and Mascagni’s librettist for this new work suggested a tragedy set in Japan, in keeping with a vogue for exotic subjects. The …

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Il Trittico, Opera Holland Park, OHP, June 2015

A terrific evening and superb start to Opera Holland Park’s 2015 season. Neil Irish’s designs were excellent, particularly for Il Tabarro in Martin Lloyd-Evans production where weary stevedores and noises of the quayside set the evening in motion. As captain of the barge, Stephen Gadd’s calm tension and eventual exasperation, as he pleads with his …

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The Jacobin, Buxton Opera Festival, July 2014

The Jacobins were the hard-core French revolutionaries who inspired the Reign of Terror, and in this Dvořak opera the Count has been persuaded that his son Bohuš has become a Jacobin. Correcting this calumny and persuading the Count he has been misled appears to recede into the distance towards the end … yet suddenly the …

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Katya Kabanova, Holland Park Opera, August 2009

This performance was a team effort, led with great emotional sensitivity by Stuart Stratford in the orchestra pit.

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