Verdi revelled in the power and fantasy of Shakespeare, and when he recreated Macbeth as an Italian opera he practically redefined the genre – demanding a Lady Macbeth who was a sublime actor as well as an outstanding singer. He’d have been thrilled with this production from Zurich Opera House, with its boldly imaginative staging by David Pountney and urgent, nuanced conducting from Franz Welser-Möst. But above all, he’d have been gripped by the young Sardinian soprano Paoletta Marrocu as Lady Macbeth, and an interpretation that Gramophone magazine compared to Maria Callas: “from first to last, a truly stunning performance”.
Rusalka
David Pountney’s landmark English National Opera staging of Dvorák’s haunting fairy tale opera left critics and audiences spellbound. The production is set in a Victorian nursery where an adolescent girl, on the brink of sensual awakening, dreams of first love. Her story is that of Rusalka the wood nymph who, like Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, sacrifices all for a love destined to be betrayed. High above the stage Rusalka dreamily swings as the picturesque gives way to the surreal. Influenced by Jung and Freud, Magritte and Delvaux and magically realised in the designs of Stefanos Lazaridis, Pountney’s Rusalka succeeds in creating a fairy tale to enchant the most hardened modern audience.
David Pountney states that Rusalka is about “a typical initiation into social and sexual experience” – the evolution from a child to young woman. He conjures up an enchanted world of repression and surreal fantasy. The set is spacious, gleaming white and full of archetypal symbols including a rocking horse, wardrobe, furniture which slides about, dolls that dance, floorboards that open to reveal a pool with a swing high above it. The effect produces a dreamworld which teeters on the edge of a nightmare. Sung in English.
The Fairy Queen
The new production of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen launched in 1995 by the English National Opera (ENO) was received with great enthusiasm by both the public and musical press. This atmospheric production was prepared by David Pountney, Robert Israel created the stage set, Dunya Ramicova was responsible for costume design and Quinny Sacks was responsible for the choreography of the dance roles as well as the numerous breathtaking ballet scenes. Under the musical direction of Nicholas Kok, the English National Orchestra played a baroque music which was as crystal clear as it was expressively infectious. Next to outstanding performers of the dancing roles such as Puck (Simon Rice) and the Indian boy (Arthur Pita), an entire armada of excellent singers was summoned up such as one seldom experiences together on the baroque opera stage. These included Yvonne Kenny as Titania, Thomas Randle as Oberon and Richard Van Allan as King Theseus. Jonathan Best, with his comic portrayal of the drunken poet, was loved by the audience and praised highly by the press, while other singers like Michael Chance, Mary Hegarthy, Janis Kelly, Marc Le Brocq and Christopher Ross all contributed their talents to produce an unusual musical theatre experience.
The Passenger
Though composed as early as 1968, Mieczylaw Weinberg’s opera The Passenger received its first full staging only in 2010. The work – based on an 1962 novel by concentration-camp survivor Zofia Posmysz – was quickly recognised as one of the most important operas of the second half of the 20th century, and one whose themes are now as important as they’ve ever been. That first staging, by David Pountney, has gone on to receive classic status, and is here seen for the first time at Madrid’s Teatro Real, conducted by an artist who has been instrumental in the recent Weinberg revival, Mirga Gražinytè-Tyla.