Coppélia is a classical ballet in the true sense, and with its touch of East European folklore, continues to enjoy worldwide popularity. It combines the romance between Swanilda and Franz with the story of the doll-maker Coppelius, whose greatest desire is to create a doll with a soul. Franz immediately falls in love with Coppélia, who he thinks is real, but eventually recognises is just a doll. He returns to Swanilda, after which the final grand divertissement sees everyone reconciled.
Carmen
The heroine of Mérimée’s novel and Bizet’s opera is a woman who ruthlessly takes what she wants. Mats Ek’s powerful distillation of the fiery tale of passion and murderous jealousy is a breathtaking explosion of exhilarating and inventive dance. In her blood-red flamenco dress, Ana Laguna is mesmerising as Carmen. Yvan Auzely and Marc Hwang are her rival lovers. Ek uses Rodion Shchedrin’s arrangement of Bizet’s perennially popular music. Recorded in studio with the Cullberg Ballet, this is video dance at its very best.
The Fiery Angel
Valéry Gergiev is said to be at his best when interpreting Russian composers. Convincing evidence is given with this production of Sergei Prokofiev’s “The Fiery Ange”l from the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. Prokofiev’s disturbingly enigmatic opera was never performed during his lifetime – it was considered too decadent by Stalin and his successors – but David Freeman’s imaginative production asserts it as one of the composer’s greatest masterpieces. Galina Gorchakova and Sergei Leiferkus inspire with brilliant performances in the two main roles.
The opera is derived from a novel by the Russian decadent Valéry Bryusov. Ostensibly, it is a tale of religious hysteria and demonic possession and also explores symbolically the love triangle endured by the writer and his self-destructive lover, the poet Nina Petrovskaya.
David Freeman has completely entered into this opera’s strangely unnerving world. Evil is all around us and in his sensational production the image is taken quite literally.
Capriccio
From the San Francisco Opera 1993: Dame Kiri Te Kanawa has made the role of the Countess in Capriccio her own and her performance in Stephen Lawless’s San Francisco Opera production met with high critical praise. Her suitors are sung by David Kuebler and Simon Keenlyside and the cast also includes Tatiana Troyanos in her last role, Håkan Hagegård and Victor Braun. Richard Strauss’s opera about opera is set in the eighteenth century and the period is evoked poetically in Mauro Pagano’s exquisite salon set and Thierry Bosquet’s lavish costumes. (Sung in German)
Die lustige Witwe
The idea of a festival on the Neusiedler Lake in Mörbisch (in Austria’s province of Burgenland) was born in the summer of 1955; two years later, after a stage had been erected in the Mörbish Cove, Johann Strauss’s “Gypsy Baron” opened the first season of the “Seefestspiele”. The festival’s repertory is dominated by the works of the “Golden” and “Silver” Viennese operetta, from Johann Strauss to Ralph Benatzky and Robert Stolz. Lehár’s most famous operetta, “The Merry Widow”, was given its world premiere on 30 December 1905 in Vienna’s Theater an der Wien. It has been translated into 25 languages and played over 250,000 times around the world. It has been played everywhere, including – according to a 1910 newspaper report – on the Zambesi in the heart of colonial Africa. When it came out in New York and Chicago in 1907, it set off a veritable “Merry Widow” craze, spawning cigarettes, cocktails, hats etc.
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood is widely acclaimed as Canada’s most eminent novelist, poet and critic. Her books, among them The Handmaid’s Tale and Cat’s Eye, have earned her enormous respect and numerous awards in the literary world. She is noted for her deep understanding of human behaviour, a beautifully understated style and a tremendously broad scope. Interviewed in and around her home in Toronto, Atwood talks about her writing in a programme which focuses on her book The Robber Bride.
Icons of Twentieth-Century Design
In today’s consumer society our expectations, aspirations and dreams are reflected in the products we buy, or covet. From the millions of goods that go on sale each year, certain items rise above the dictates of mere fashion – they become icons, stamped indelibly on the consciousness of our age. Made in a lively, thought-provoking and accessible way, six ten-minute programmes focus on some of the icons of twentieth-century design, analysing their conception and considering their impact: the Coca-Cola Bottle, Gerrit Rietveld’s Red and Blue Chair, the London Transport Underground Map, the Volkswagen Beetle, Tapio Wirkkala’s Composition cutlery, and the Swatch.
John Lee Hooker
John Lee Hooker has been described as the owner of the sexiest voice in music. He has released more records than any other blues artist and, along with B. B. King, he is probably the best known. This programme visits Hooker at his San Francisco home, sits in on a recording session and follows him to a local nightclub. It also travels to Clarksdale, Mississippi, in search of his roots and to Detroit, where Hooker first made his name in 1948 with the million-selling record Boogie Chillen.
Sidney Pollack
Richard Price
Richard Price is one of America’s top novelists and script-writers. His gritty and violent, street-wise stories of New York have made him a cult hero, and his film credits include Sea of Love and The Color of Money. This programme focuses on his thriller Clockers, set in crime-ridden Jersey City, and it visits a typical American inner-city area with Price. Interviews with friends and fellow writers, readings by Price from his own works, and film clips combine to paint a fascinating picture of the writer and his material.