Tag Archives: Verdi
Posted on 1 November 2024
This production by the late Jonathan Miller is a classic, and congratulations to the ENO for putting it on with a splendid cast. Recent threats by the Arts Council notwithstanding, the ENO does a fine job of bringing people in to witness one of the great art forms, which is exactly what they should be …
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Posted on 23 September 2024
Even in Wales, the Land of Song, they are having to cut back on opera and defend themselves against the Arts Council. Yet despite the cuts this was a magnificent new Rigoletto with superb singing — see my review in The Article
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Posted on 14 July 2024
Congratulations to Garsington for putting on this feisty production of Verdi’s second opera. The story is absurd, but the music is full of oomph and the staging was a delight. — see my review in The Article.
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Posted on 12 July 2024
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 …
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Posted on 20 September 2023
A man’s father is killed by an accidental gunshot. He holds his sister and her foreign lover responsible, and vows revenge. Despite the lovers parting, and taking sanctuary in religious devotion, they cannot escape the son’s undying fury, which in a scene of poetic justice reunites them at the end. The opera is based on …
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Posted on 24 July 2023
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, …
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Posted on 2 July 2023
Schiller’s Don Carlos is an intensely human drama. It uses as a background the Spanish Court during the reign of Philip II, the same Philip who was co-ruler of England after his marriage to Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII. The drama tells of a love match between his son and heir Carlos, and Elisabeth …
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Posted on 30 September 2022
In 1869 Ismail Pasha, the Khedive of Egypt built an opera house in Cairo — the first in Africa. It opened with a successful performance of Rigoletto, but the Khedive — the title meant Viceroy within the Ottoman Empire— was keen to impress the world even more by presenting a new Verdi opera. My review …
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Posted on 27 June 2022
What a wonderful production, simple, bewitching and highly effective. The use of dancers helped the atmosphere (unlike their use in many productions), dark and menacing. Brilliantly conducted by young Italian conductor Francesco Cilluffo who gave this relatively early Verdi the energy it deserves. My review in The Article.
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Posted on 21 June 2022
In this David Alden production the opera’s title might almost be Iago, the name it was given in its early creation since there was already an Otello by Rossini. Simon Keenlyside’s Iago is very much the dark star, seen at the beginning of each act, half hidden by the curtain. At the end he sits in the …
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Posted on 18 January 2022
The eponymous character in Verdi’s third opera Nabucco is Nebuchadnezzar II, mighty king of Babylon. The opera calls for a colourful production, but without the slightest nod to Byron’s imagery about the Babylonian ‘cohorts gleaming in purple and gold’, here was a mid-twentieth century, third-rate dictatorship, with bare-chested guards in braces toting AK-47s. See my review …
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Posted on 17 November 2021
This latest revival of Verdi’s Macbeth is superb, with Anna Pirozzi as a hugely powerful and mendacious Lady Macbeth. The golden cage in which Macbeth and his wife live after murdering King Duncan is physically represented on stage, and Macbeth finds himself impaled on its bars at the end. See my review in The Article.
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Posted on 14 September 2021
A magnificent start to the new season and full reopening of the Royal Opera after the Covid closure. This new production by Artistic Director Oliver Mears really hits the nail on the head, and portrays the Duke as a very nasty piece of work, rather than a mere libertine. Superb conducting by Antonio Pappano, and …
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Posted on 6 August 2021
Based on Schiller’s play Kabale und Liebe (Intrigue and Love) this opera deals with the machinations of a local aristocracy on a father and his daughter. The Count seeks to thwart the marriage of his son to the honest Luisa since he has a better match for him. The Count himself got his position though …
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Posted on 13 February 2020
Wonderful performances of this Verdi opera despite a heavily psychological production involving dancers, a chorus dressed as clowns, Rodolfo and Luisa as young children, and avoiding one death on the basis that evil will always survive. My review in The Article.
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Posted on 10 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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Posted on 13 December 2019
This first revival of Keith Warner’s dark 2017 production, once again under the baton of music director Antonio Pappano, was musically thrilling, with Ermonela Jaho as Desdemona, Gregory Kunde as Otello, and Carlos Álvarez as Iago — see my review in The Article.
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Posted on 19 July 2019
This production by Philipp Stölzl boasted a superbly engineered set with a giant moving head, two hands, and a balloon that rose more than 30 metres into the air. Mechanically a great achievement, but the staging was too busy by half, with singers and acrobats appearing all over the place, including inside and on top …
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Posted on 10 June 2019
A thrilling revival of the 2016 production, once again under the excellent baton of Gianluca Marcianò. Clive Bayley and Ruxandra Donose reprised their beautifully nuanced performances as Philip II and Princess Eboli, joined this time by international rising star Leonardo Capalbo as Carlo, and Brett Polegato as Rodrigo, both superb, with Marina Costa-Jackson singing strongly …
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Posted on 28 March 2019
Wonderful casts for this Christof Loy production of Verdi’s Forza, plus terrific conducting by Pappano make this essential viewing, though tickets are in short supply and one pair was reportedly sold for £7,000. See my review in The Article
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Posted on 10 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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Posted on 16 November 2018
Wow! Superb playing from the orchestra under the baton of Hungarian conductor Henrik Nánási, one time music director of the Komische Oper Berlin. His command of the musical forces exhibits wonderfully restrained power, just like his conducting of Salome in January this year. It allows the orchestra to swell with emotion, as in the glorious father/ …
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Posted on 8 July 2018
This early Verdi opera is set in Peru, based on a play that Voltaire designed to criticise the smug superiority of conventional Christianity in a foreign context. Its libretto by Salvatore Cammarano of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples ignored most of Voltaire’s subtleties, but Verdi was delighted to be working with him and continued …
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Posted on 23 June 2018
In staging Verdi’s Ballo in Maschera about the assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden, the first decision is whether to set it in its originally intended milieu or follow Verdi, compelled by the censors to avoid a regicide on stage. As a result he set it in America with Gustav as Riccardo, governor of Boston. Stephen …
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Posted on 25 March 2018
This third revival of Phyllida Lloyd’s 2002 Macbeth is the perfect antidote to the Royal Opera’s poorly-received, recent productions of Carmen and House of the Dead. With a fantastic cast, this is absolutely not to be missed. Casting was a problem for Verdi, who produced Macbeth at the same time as I masnadieri (based on …
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Posted on 17 March 2018
Mirrors and bright lights in the party scenes contrast with the tranquillity of a country garden in early Act II and the bleak feeling of a cemetery where Violetta digs her own grave in Act III. With designs ranging from fin de siècle Paris to the glitter of modern Las Vegas, Daniel Kramer in his …
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Posted on 11 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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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 29 September 2017
This brand new Aida from Phelim McDermott, whose stunning Akhnaten for the ENO in 2016 won the Olivier Award earlier this year, showed once again some spectacular theatre aided by the Improbable company. It all started with great subtlety as the curtain peeped open, at first showing just a small triangle of light at the …
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Posted on 22 June 2017
Putting Shakespeare on stage demands theatricality, which Keith Warner’s new production delivers right at the start with Iago spotlighted on a dark stage, an image repeated at the start of Act III with Otello himself. The massive ship in Act I, and actors creating merry havoc in the fight that Iago provokes between Cassio and …
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Posted on 13 May 2017
That great playwright Schiller did not let historical facts get in the way of a good story, and his Don Karlos is a gripping stage tragedy. Traducung the close and loving relationship between Philip II and his third wife Elizabeth de Valois, step-mother to Don Carlo, it was perfect for Verdi, who added elements of …
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Posted on 21 March 2017
Verdi’s Aroldo is a later adaptation of his Stiffelio about a Protestant pastor who eventually forgives his wife’s adultery. This priest’s tale was not easy one for Italian audiences, and following the huge success of Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and La Traviata, Verdi wanted to recreate the opera in a different setting. His librettist Piave turned …
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Posted on 3 February 2017
Now that Christopher Alden’s stale and pretentious North American production has been aborted after a single run, we are back with Jonathan Miller’s gangland setting, looking as fresh as ever. Wonderful. This superb production well matches the tragedy that unfolds in what became a turning point in Verdi’s operatic career. Before its premiere in Venice …
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Posted on 11 September 2016
Of Verdi’s three Shakespeare works — the others are his final operas Otello and Falstaff — this marks something of a turning point in his career, and its 1847 premiere in Florence was a huge success. In this staging by Oliver Mears, first performed in 2014 by Northern Ireland Opera where he is artistic director, …
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Posted on 3 July 2016
Darkness, fire and blood are the elements around which director David Bösch has built his new co-production with Frankfurt Opera, debuting here at Covent Garden. Darkness is inherent in the main events of this opera, for example in Act I when Leonora mistakes the Count di Luna for her lover Manrico, and indeed in Act …
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Posted on 23 June 2016
For a large opera house Verdi’s Don Carlo is quite a challenge, even in the four (rather than five) act version seen here. The great auto-da-fé scene at the end of Act II, where Carlo leads in a deputation from Flanders, threatens his father Philip II and is disarmed by Rodrigo, before the burning of …
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Posted on 7 June 2016
Complementing the dramatic drive given to Verdi’s music by Maurizio Benini in the orchestra pit, and the terrific power the chorus delivered in this sixth century BC tale of Babylonian conquest and Hebrew captivity, the singers produced gripping vocal performances. Placido Domingo sang with convincing strength as Nabucco, a powerful ruler torn and confused by …
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Posted on 10 November 2015
The unusually abstract title of this mature yet seldom-performed Verdi opera could be rephrased as ‘the force of anger’. The Marquis of Calatrava’s ferocity at his daughter Leonora’s choice of husband leads to his accidental death, and his son Don Carlo’s furiously determined revenge leads to his own death and that of his sister. “Vengeance …
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Posted on 12 July 2015
This Verdi opera, like Rossini’s William Tell, is originally based on a play by Schiller that deals with a central heroic figure who rallies people and fighting men against an occupying force. Comparing mature Rossini to early Verdi one might expect the Rossini to win easily, yet by contrast with the Royal Opera’s current clunky …
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Posted on 5 July 2015
For the fourth performance on July 4, the orchestra under Manlio Benzi produced a thrilling and vivid account of Verdi’s score, helped by excellent singing and a colourful and imaginative production. It starts with a black-tie cocktail party in a gallery of Egyptian antiquities, and director Daniel Slater takes a delightfully tongue-in-cheek attitude to Acts …
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Posted on 10 February 2015
At the start of this production there is nothing on stage but a plain chair, and in the final scene, isolated from Annina, Dr. Grenvil, Germont, and even Alfredo, who leaves the stage to join the others in the auditorium, Violetta sits on it, alone. Finally she recedes into darkness beyond the back of the …
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Posted on 19 December 2014
This new Ballo by German director Katharina Thoma is a co-production with Dortmund where it had its premiere in September. The Germans, who display a fondness for Regie-Theater, criticized it for timidity and bowing to the dull tastes of a Royal Opera House audience where tourists expect something simple. Such a misunderstanding of the Covent …
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Posted on 15 October 2014
Revenge is a dish best eaten cold, and at the end of this opera, Loredano, one of the Venetian decemviri (ten men who govern Venice) gladly consumes the knowledge that the two Foscari are dead. Noble men both, gone to their graves in agony. Placido Domingo showed the anguish of the elder Foscari — Doge …
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Posted on 14 September 2014
After the end of a terrific performance, director David Alden was presented with two gifts to celebrate the 30th anniversary of his work with the ENO, whom he extolled as his favourite opera company in the world. That they work so well together is amply illustrated in this production whose huge enclosing set allows the stage …
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Posted on 7 May 2014
Nothing could take away from the stunning performance of Ailyn Pérez as Violetta — not the Royal Opera House gremlins that turned the house lights on and off again during her final aria in Act II, nor the management that failed to provide flowers for the curtain calls. This was magic, the first of four …
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Posted on 14 February 2014
The original Victor Hugo play (Le roi s’amuse) that underlies Verdi’s Rigoletto takes place in the sixteenth century French court of François I. This touch of lèse majesté made the censors reject it, and the action was eventually transferred to Mantua with the King as a Duke, but the main point is that he has …
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Posted on 15 December 2013
On stage at Covent Garden last year, Robert Carsen’s new production showed Falstaff on a horse in Act III, and though I missed that on the Met cinema screening the comedy seemed more natural than in London. There was an appearance of spontaneity, with the performers playing the whole thing in a rambunctiously convincing way, …
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Posted on 18 October 2013
For this opera, Verdi was presented with a script by Eugène Scribe, who simply modified an old libretto for Donizetti. The new Verdi opera was supposed to be based on the Sicilian uprising against French rule in 1282, whereas the earlier libretto (Le duc d’Albe) for Donizetti was based on events in 1573 when the …
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Posted on 5 September 2013
Glorious singing from Maltese tenor Joseph Calleja in Prom 72 with the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi under their chief conductor Xian Zhang. The theme of the concert was anguish and despair, well suiting Tchaikovsky’s Manfred Symphony in the second half. Manfred, based on Byron’s poem of the same name, bears a burden of …
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Posted on 5 May 2013
What a privilege to witness such an outstanding performance of opera, with the incomparable Jonas Kaufmann in the title role. You want to stay and savour the applause, to recall the extraordinary soliloquy by Ferruccio Furlanetto as Philip II at the start of Act IV, when he expresses in words the emotional pain he has …
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Posted on 31 March 2013
After Verdi’s dissatisfaction with his second opera he nearly gave up, but thank goodness he didn’t because this third one is magnificent, apart from its rather weak ending. Placing the action in the 1940s rather than the original setting of 586 BC is a good idea, but it never really gelled and I found Daniele Abbado’s …
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Posted on 19 March 2013
After UCOpera’s production of a Rameau work last year, which suffered from over-ambitious direction that didn’t gel, I was unsure what this year’s I Lombardi would be like. I need not have worried — it was terrific. Suits of armour and chain mail are expensive, so director Jamie Hayes has updated it to warring gangs …
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Posted on 17 February 2013
The idea of Rigoletto in early 1960s Las Vegas during the days of the Rat Pack made me apprehensive, but the superb sets by Christine Jones and costumes by Susan Hilferty won me over completely. Count Monterone as an Arab sheikh, the colourful tuxedos of the men, the stylish dark green and purple of Sparafucile’s …
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Posted on 3 February 2013
Four scenes with no intermission and no sets, except for multiple curtains and a chair — but it works! This is Traviata cut to its essentials, concentrating on Violetta, and to a lesser extent Germont père. Corinne Winters was a phenomenal Violetta, and as the opera ends she stands alone on stage facing Germont, Alfredo and Annina in the auditorium. …
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Posted on 9 December 2012
David Alden’s vivid production of Verdi’s Ballo, portrays the main characters Riccardo and Renato in their historical roles as the Swedish king Gustav III and his murderer Anckarström. The assassination took place at a masked ball, and in an account written by a Polish officer who was present, the king received an anonymous warning “N’allez pas …
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Posted on 27 October 2012
Wonderful costumes by Peter J. Hall, excellent sets by Michael Yeargan, all beautifully lit by Duane Schuler help bring this Elijah Moshinsky production to life, along with deeply expressive music from the orchestra under the direction of Semyon Bychkov. The star of the show was Renée Fleming as Desdemona, always beautiful and coming through in …
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Posted on 13 July 2012
We are surely lucky that this revival of Elijah Moshinsky’s wonderful 1987 production — the first since 2005 — was directed by the man himself, and it was hugely effective. The sets with those vast pillars help give the impression that a mere human tragedy is being played out against a world that will carry …
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Posted on 22 May 2012
Ballo Della Regina (The Queen’s Ball) is a short Balanchine work set to music that was cut from Verdi’s opera Don Carlo. This ballet involves a sequence of variations, first with twelve girls in blue, joined by two principals in white. After a pas-de-deux for the principals, four soloists in violet come on one at a time, and …
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Posted on 16 May 2012
The production team for Robert Carsen’s new staging of Verdi’s Falstaff received a mixed reception. Why so? This is a co-production with La Scala where it will feature in Verdi’s bicentenary there next year. Carsen has updated the setting of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor from Elizabethan times to 1950s England, with Sir John and other men in hunting red at …
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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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Posted on 26 February 2012
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 …
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Posted on 28 October 2011
Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Domingo’s first appearance at the Royal Opera House (as Cavaradossi in Tosca), this was a three-part Verdi programme featuring the final acts of Otello, Rigoletto and Simon Boccanegra, and amply demonstrating his superb sense of drama. Domingo is a consummate artist — not just a wonderful singer, but a terrific actor. When I …
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Posted on 1 August 2011
Rigoletto himself was brilliantly sung and performed by Robert Poulton. He didn’t overdo the nastiness of this character, as sometimes happens, yet his determination to take revenge came over very well when he makes the fatal mistake of telling his daughter to go home alone, after showing her the Duke’s real character.
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Posted on 9 June 2011
At the end of this opera, Boccanegra is finally reconciled with his arch-enemy Jacopo Fiesco, and blesses the marriage of his long lost daughter Amelia with the young Gabriele Adorno, a previously sworn enemy. Now, dying of a slow poison, administered by his right hand man Paolo, he asks Fiesco to make Adorno his successor …
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Posted on 25 May 2011
… it was huge pleasure to hear Liudmyla Monastyrska as Lady Macbeth, with her superb vocal technique, and her breathtaking power.
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Posted on 14 May 2011
This triple bill made for a rather fragmented evening, because the first two pieces took only 36 minutes between them, while the two intervals lasted half an hour each. But it was all worth it because the final item, Christopher Wheeldon’s Danse à Grande Vitesse, was wonderfully invigorating and performed with great energy. A clear stage …
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Posted on 12 March 2011
Exiles and refugees in the modern world can take their gods with them, but it was not always so … and when Roberto Alagna as Radames sings in Act III that Aida is demanding he abandon his homeland, and therefore his gods too (Abbandonar la patria, l’are de’ nostri dei!), it was a riveting moment.
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Posted on 12 October 2010
The duke gets many of the best tunes, but the most important character is the jester, Rigoletto, and we are lucky in this new run to have Dmitri Hvorostovsky in the role. He was sensational, both in singing and acting …
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Posted on 15 August 2010
I’ve always found [this] terrific stuff, and was delighted with the excellent musical direction by Stuart Stratford, whom I remember doing an equally fine job at Holland Park last summer with Katya Kabanova.
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Posted on 30 June 2010
It’s a sell-out, but if you can get hold of tickets, don’t hesitate. At the end the entire main floor gave it a standing ovation.
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Posted on 11 May 2010
Mr. Hvorostovsky sang gloriously … it’s worth going to this brief run of five performances just to hear him. Both Ms. Jaho and Mr. Pirgu sang strongly after a rather nervous start …
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Posted on 28 April 2010
David McVicar’s new production strips away the Egyptian baggage and places events in an ancient time of masculine combat, female sexual energy, and human sacrifice.
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Posted on 27 September 2009
The jester, named Triboulet in Hugo’s play, becomes Rigoletto in the opera, and is surely one of Verdi’s great creations, sung here by Anthony Michaels-Moore, who played him with enormous sensitivity.
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Posted on 13 September 2009
Imagine a Christian Taliban in Spain, putting men, women and children in Flanders — all heretics — to the sword.
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Posted on 19 July 2009
The key scene in the opera is the midnight rendezvous between the king and Amelia, where they are surprised by Amelia’s husband Anckarstrom, and she veils her face.
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Posted on 16 June 2009
Renée Fleming gave a superbly sensitive performance as Violetta, brilliantly showing her fragility and death at the end, and Joseph Calleja sang like a god as Alfredo.
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