Mainly Opera and Ballet
A brilliant performance of one of Verdi’s greatest operas, suitably reduced to the size of the GPO stage. Very fine choral singing too, and a cast that did the opera full justice, conveying the huge power that Verdi gave to this story of love, betrayal, and conflict between Church and State — see my review …
Political intrigue, paternity and poison are the principal ingredients driving this Verdi opera. The story, set in 14th century Genoa, may be ahistorical in detail but the ambitions driving it are not, and there really was a pirate turned governor named Simon Boccanegra — see my review in The Article.
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, …
