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Dear opera-lover,
You're probably still making your way through our Festivals issue, but there's no time to dilly-dally: now, hot on its heels, comes the May issue. There's another bumper crop of reviews and articles, and it features Baden-Baden's striking new Ariadne auf Naxos (which saw Renée Fleming's first stab at the title role) on the cover.
Inside we have a fascinating in-depth interview with the conductor Oleg Caetani, who talks about growing up in the shadow of his father, Igor Markevitch, tuition with Nadia Boulanger, and his relationship with English National Opera, where he returns to conduct Madam Butterfly in May. Dennis Marks takes another look at Tippett's King Priam in its 50th-anniversary year, repositioning it as a 'domestic epic', and George Loomis provides an introduction to Metastasio's L'Olimpiade-his Olympics-based libretto, some of whose hundred or so settings are getting an airing in London's Olympic year.
Among our reviews are Hugh Canning's verdict on Munich's star-studded Don Carlos (Harteros, Kaufmann and Pape providing a dream line-up, even if Mariusz Kwieceń was forced to drop out) and John Allison's assessment of Dmitry Tcherniakov's new Kitezh in Amsterdam. US reviews include a verdict on Rufus Wainwright's Prima Donna at its first American performance, a second chance to fall for John Harbison's Great Gatsby in San Francisco and a return to 'business as usual' at the Met. In the UK, we cover several important recent new productions-some controversial, some uncontroversial and some solidly and pleasingly traditional. Into the latter category goes Raymond Gubbay's large-scale Albert Hall Aida; you might want to make up your own minds, though, as to where to put ENO's The Death of Klinghoffer, and Rusalka and Miss Fortune at the ROH...
With a clutch of reviews of recent CD, DVD and book releases, along with the usual news and gossip, you'll find plenty to get your operatic teeth into. And to make sure you never run out things to chew on, maybe you should think about taking out one of our subscriptions-either for the print edition, which also gives you access to the increasingly popular, searchable digital edition, or for the digital edition alone. Go to www.opera.co.uk to make sure you don't miss out!
With best wishes,
Hugo Shirley, Assistant Editor
OPERA
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LIVING OPERA | | |
Fort Worth Opera's Darren K. Woods on setting a new festival agenda
I guess you could say that opera festivals are in my blood. My first opera job as a professional singer was as an apprentice artist for Santa Fe Opera. I worked at Santa Fe most summers for the next 14 years, along with the festivals in Saint Louis, Chautauqua, Glimmerglass, Sarasota and several others, but eventually I retired from singing and became a general director. When I came to Fort Worth, the board charged me with breathing new life into our 60-year-old stagione company, and the idea of changing into a festival format was a natural leap for me-albeit an exciting and frightening one. It would necessitate altering our business model completely, trying something that had never been done in North Texas, and risking a patron base that was comfortable attending operas spaced out over the year. However, facing stiff competition from the hundreds of other arts organizations serving a population of over six million people in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, it was a matter of change or die.
Prior to my arrival, Fort Worth Opera's programming had always been pretty standard. Once in a great while, it would delve into the 'modern' repertoire by doing Carlisle Floyd's Susannah or even Stewart Copeland's Holy Blood and Crescent Moon, but mostly it was your standard 'Bohème, Butterfly and Traviata' company. Before I was hired as general and artistic director in 2001, I told the board at my interview that exploring more adventurous fare would be at the heart of my mission at Fort Worth Opera, and if they didn't want that for their company, then I was not the right candidate for the job. I have been extremely fortunate to have a board that shares and supports my vision.
Read on |
| PEOPLE: OLEG CAETANI | | |
Caetani returns to ENO to conduct Madam Butterfly this month
Andrew Clark
No, says Oleg Caetani, he does not feel he suffered an injustice in the fact or manner of his removal as music director-designate of English National Opera in December 2005, barely ten months after the appointment had been made. And yes, he is delighted to be back at the Coliseum to conduct Madam Butterfly. 'ENO did everything to please me,' he says of this month's revival, 'granting me the cast I wanted and the right quantity of rehearsals. I love this orchestra and chorus. They are very special.'
Given the way Martin Smith's board of directors treated him in 2005, most conductors would have vowed never to return. Caetani took no umbrage and moved on. As many opera houses and orchestras around the world have discovered, he is a law unto himself, which has its good side-manifested in his 'no-hard-feelings' regard for the company with which he made his UK debut.
Read on |
| AMSTERDAM | | |
John Allison
Having seen most of the productions of Rimsky-Korsakov's The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya that have followed since Valery Gergiev reintroduced this mystical masterpiece to a very wintry St Petersburg in February 1994, I have little doubt that Dmitry Tcherniakov's new staging for the netherlands opera counts as the most fascinating. Not always as easy to understand as Harry Kupfer's spectacular White-Russians-vs-Bolsheviks show at Bregenz in 1995, Tcherniakov's vision of the piece is both alarmingly contemporary and utterly timeless, tapping deeply into the strange legend that inspired Rimsky in his penultimate opera to write what is not unfairly called the 'Russian Parsifal'.
Tcherniakov, who has declared Kitezh to be his favourite opera, has lived with the work for some time. Indeed, he made his mainstream operatic debut directing it for the Maryinsky in 2001 (his only previous opera had been the premiere of Vladimir Kobekin's Young David in Novosibirsk in 1998), when Gergiev hired him after the Maryinsky's two previous productions had been quickly abandoned.
Read on |
| LIFE IS A DREAM | |
Birmingham Opera Company, Argyle Works
March 21
Hugh Canning
Jonathan Dove's association with Graham Vick's Birmingham Opera Company goes back to its beginnings 25 years ago-initially as a répétiteur, later as an arranger and orchestral reducer of The Magic Flute, The Cunning Little Vixen, Falstaff and the company's celebrated mini-Ring (or Ringlet, as it was nicknamed). He has seen the company transform itself from a small-scale touring troupe into a massive, site-specific operation, playing only in Birmingham, with which Vick can indulge his penchant for Verona-Arena-style casts of thousands-well, hundreds anyway-and for what is now termed 'immersive' theatre (the audience promenades and gets caught up in the action).
It was logical that Vick should turn to Dove, one of the most successful of recent opera composers, for the company's first large-scale commission, Life is a Dream, based on the 'Golden Age' drama of the Spanish poet and playwright, Calderón de la Barca. The play, written between 1629 and 1635, could not have been anything but controversial. It tells of a (Polish) King who incarcerates his son because of a prophecy that he would prove a bad ruler.
Read on |
| MAY SPOTLIGHT | | |
2 Bordeaux, Grand Théâtre. Elza van den Heever, Anna Christy, Isabel Leonard, Sonia Prina and Alek Shrader lead the cast in David Alden's new Alcina, c. Harry Bicket
15 London, Royal Opera House. Robert Carsen directs a new Falstaff, with Ambrogio Maestri, Ana María Martínez and Dalibor Jenis, c. Daniele Gatti
19 Milan, La Scala. Robin Ticciati conducts Richard Jones's new Peter Grimes, with John Mark Ainsley, Susan Gritton and Christopher Purves
19 St Louis, Loretto-Hilton Center. Opera Theatre of Saint Louis's season opens with Stephen Barlow directing a new Carmen, with Kendall Gladen, c. Carlos Izcaray
20 Glyndebourne. Festival opens with Vladimir Jurowski conducting Melly Still's new Cunning Little Vixen, with Lucy Crowe, Emma Bell and Sergey Leiferkus
25 Salzburg, Haus für Mozart. Cecilia Bartoli launches her first Whitsun Festival singing Cleopatra in the new Moshe Leiser-Patrice Caurier Giulio Cesare, with Andreas Scholl and Anne Sofie von Otter, c. Giovanni Antonini
26 Dortmund, Opernhaus. Jac van Steen conducts a new production of Goldschmidt's Beatrice Cenci, with Christiane Kohl, p. Regula Gerber
29 Buenos Aires, Teatro Colón. First Argentinian production of Enescu's Oedipe, p. La Fura dels Baus, c. Ira Levin |
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