Lessons in Love and Violence, the new opera by composer George Benjamin and playwright Martin Crimp, two of Britain’s most celebrated artists, received a glowing reception from audiences and critics alike on its world premiere at the Royal Opera House in London. In a modern day setting it tells the powerful and thrilling story of King Edward II, whose romantic relationship with the Earl of Cornwall, Piers Gaveston, tears his country and his family apart. Barbara Hannigan is as “outstanding as ever”! (Financial Times)
La Voix Humaine
“This innovative hour-long reimagining… is at once an operatic vignette and an acting showcase — well worth your time.” (The Times) La Voix Humaine, as visualised by Emmy and Bafta winning director James Kent offers an unprecedented cinematic interpretation of Poulenc’s masterpiece. As an hour long dramatic one-off, it features only one performer, the character known only as Elle. It was premiered in Paris in 193 as a play by Jean Cocteau and subsequently turned into music drama by his friend Francis Poulenc in 1959. Written originally in 1928, Cocteau was examining change that the technology of the telephone was to bring to humans and how they conducted their relationships. “In spite of it all, we are connected by this telephone… this line is the last thing tying me to us”. The viewer is skilfully placed as a silent observer of Elle’s desperate conversation, captured in the intimate and claustrophobic setting of a single apartment. Her hopes, her longings, her nostalgia, and her final acceptance, all illuminated by a powerful score conducted by Antonio Pappano. We feel her pain as she grapples with love and loss over the course of one late afternoon via a single, suspenseful, often interrupted, telephone call with her departing lover.
Mozart: Don Giovanni
Filmed at the 1954 Salzburg Festival, this restored and technically enhanced recording of “Don Giovanni” is more than simply a superb performance of one of the world’s most lastingly popular operas with an exquisite cast led by Cesare Siepi, Elisabeth Grümmer and Lisa della Casa. It is the last visual document of Wilhelm Furtwängler’s art, the legacy of a great conductor. A giant among 20th-century conductors, Wilhelm Furtwängler was associated for many years with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra. After the war, he discovered a new, exceptionally rewarding venue for his artistry at the Salzburg Festival. Beginning with “Fidelio” in 1948, Furtwängler ushered in a golden age of memorable performances in Salzburg.
El Prometeo
After its premier in 1669, Antonio Draghi’s opera El Prometeo has never been performed again – until Leonardo García Alarcón used the only remaining handwritten copy of the score to revive it in Dijon. Alarcón, who is the Opéra de Dijon’s artist in residence together with his orchestra Cappella Mediterranea, has made it his speciality to bring forgotten masterpieces to light, He thus descovered a missing link in the history of opera between the Venetian opera tradition and the one to rule Vienna in the following centuries.
La Princesse Légère
A princess who is as light as a feather: The opera La Princesse Légère by Violeta Cruz, premiered in 2017, follows the fairytale The Light Princess by George MacDonald. Written for children and those with a child’s soul, his tales enchanted J.R.R. Tolkien and Lewis Carroll. The Light Princess calls to mind, with humor and poetry, the way children confront the gravity of the adult world and how parents learn to recognize the uniqueness of each child. The score is an outburst of life, in which electronics meet chanson and the sound of opera.
The Fiery Angel
The young Renata hears voices. Since childhood, she has been visited by a fiery angel exuding a sublime radiance. Besotted with him, she goes looking for him when he leaves her and meets Ruprecht, a knight who, out of love for her, will try to tear her away from this carnal possession. Moving from tavern to convent, against a backdrop of spiritualism and exorcism, collective hysteria and burlesque humour, The Fiery Angel is a powerful piece that has it all, bordering the very limits of expressionism. Inspired by the symbolist novel of the same name by Valery Bryusov, this opera is Prokofiev’s most striking operatic masterpiece. Its premiere at the Festival d’Aix see it transported into the tumultuous world of director Mariusz Trelinski, while Prokofiev’s score resounds to the baton of Kazushi Ono conducting the Orchestre de Paris. “Masterful and very inspired direction by Kazushi Ono, who transmutes an Orchestre de Paris of stunning sonic beauty” (Le Monde); “The Fiery Angel at Aix-en-Provence Festival – a benchmark performance!” (Financial Times)
Il palazzo incantato
Il palazzo incantato (The Enchanted Palace) by Luigi Rossi (1597-1653) has not been performed since its premiere in 1642. In Dijon, Leonardo García Alarcón and Fabrice Murgia bring back to life this unique work with singers, dancers and comedians. The libretto was written by Giulio Rospigliosi, who would later become Pope Clement IX. It is an adaptation of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, a chivalric epic considered one of the great masterpieces of Italian literature and set to music by numerous other composers like Handel and Vivaldi as well. “A remarkable work of intelligence, and powerfully poetic” (Le Monde).
Innocence
Finnish composer Kaija Saariaho (*1952) draws listeners into her soundscape: From the brooding darkness of the opening bars, the audience finds itself dragged into the unfolding nightmare. The libretto by Sofi Oksanen interweaves two narratives of a school shooting. One focuses on the students and their teacher who were present at the time of the massacre. The second is set in the present day at a wedding with the family of the shooter celebrating their innocent son’s marriage. A thriller-like intensity shifts time levels and a mixture of nine languages. “The most powerful work Saariaho has written in a career now in its fifth decade” (The New York Times). Director Simon Stone approaches this multi-layered subject with sensitivity and empathy, supported by Susanna Malkki’s fine reading of the score on the rostrum of the London Symphony Orchestra and a great cast including Magdalena Kožena and Sandrine Piau. “A composer creates her masterpiece with Innocence” The New York Times
Les p´tites Michu
In this delightful comedy by Andre Messager, award-winning conductor Pierre Dumoussaud and his young, creative team capture the audience’s imagination at the Theatre Graslin in Nantes with this “hilarious game of misunderstandings” (Le Figaro). After ist phenomenal Broadway run in 1907, Les p’tites Michu became an international hit. In Nantes, the bright colouring and the illustrations by Marianne Tricot give the operetta a cheerful, contemporary look.
La Pietra del Paragone
Considering that Rossini’s opera buffa “La pietra del paragone” (The Touchstone) is hardly ever staged and that its title is not even known through its overture, like “La scala di seta” or “La gazza ladra,” music lovers can be forgiven for being in the dark about this sparklingly luminous work. One of Rossini’s first operas, it was written for Milan’s La Scala and premiered there in 1812. It was a resounding success – in spite of its standard libretto filled with disguises, mistaken identities and trials of love and loyalty. But it boasts a splendidly varied orchestral writing, which includes dramatic hunt and storm scenes, and betrays a love of language and wordplay which presages Rossini’s later works. For this alone, it deserves an above-average treatment. The least one can say about this magical, multi-media and often side-splitting production by Pierrick Sorin and Giorgio Barberio Corsetti – and its video recording by Philippe Béziat presented here – is that Rossini’s “Touchstone” is given an incomparably special treatment here! Known for his video installations and live video performances, Sorin magnifies Rossini’s buffo humor by having the singers recorded live on stage by five cameras, integrated into decors filmed elsewhere on the stage, and having the result projected onto three large screens. The visual gags and optical illusions are as sweetly mischievous and cleverly absurd as Rossini’s libretto and musical setting.