Here, I post my reviews and document my love of opera. I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to comment on any of my posts or contact me if you wish to.
Have a nice stay!
David Buchler
All in Royal Opera House
Whilst the first of three versions of Fidelio was premiered in Vienna in 1805, it wasn’t until 1814 that the final version titled Fidelio – as opposed to Leonore for the previous two – was itself premiered to critical acclaim, with the original three Act version now reduced to two Acts. This was Beethoven’s only opera and he best described it in a letter to one of his Librettists, Georg Friedrich Treitschke, that his ‘Cooperation had saved what is best from the shipwreck’.
The stage was set, the audience ready, with plenty of children watching in the matinee performance, all ready in anticipation of Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, written by the Irish Composer Gerald Barry, with staging by Anthony McDonald.
The intimacy of Richard Jones’s production of La Boheme is well conceived. However, the rooftop apartment shared by the writers and artists is rather lacking in 19th century Marseilles style. It has clean lines and beautiful fresh pinewood sets. There is no hint of atmospheric old town accommodation and even the ladder through the sky roof, constantly open to the elements, does not really make sense, nor does the smoke from the chimney when there is no working fireplace.
La Traviata may have inspired countless works – including Moulin Rouge – but the opera itself is actually based on a real life Violetta, who was a courtesan named Marie Duplessis, born in Normandy, France in 1824.
Verdi’s penultimate opera is probably his greatest tragic musical masterpiece and the opening night of Keith Warner’s 2017 production did not disappoint. Warner’s production followed in the footsteps of Elijah Moshinsky’s glorious 30 year old production. The sets designed by Boris Kudlicka are made up of sliding and moveable fragments that either open the stage, such as in the outstanding opening storm scene, or close the stage when intimacy is required.
In a joint production with Munich and four other Opera Houses the opera director Barrie Kosky has put together an interesting and illuminating up-to-date version of Handel’s earliest complete opera, which premiered in 1707 in Venice.
Jules Massenet took a novel from Goethe to compose a lyrical 4 act opera from a French libretto by Eduard Blau. It was meant to have its premiere at the Paris Opera Comique in 1887, but due to a fire at the Opera House this did not happen and it did not take place until 1892 in a German language translation in Vienna. The French language premiere followed that year in Geneva.
Eat your heart out Florez and Dessay. A new pair of principals have hit London and star in Laurent Pelly’s 12 year old production of La Fille du regiment. The mishmash production is very much a ‘Dad’s Army’ fun billing. The comedy is always at the forefront and is infectious and the two new principals bring the house down. In fact there appears no singing weak link in a most enjoyable evening.
This one act seven scene version of modest Musorgsky’s Boris Godunov is incredibly powerful in its own right, but when it is cast with an outstanding group of singers the musicality is hugely enhanced, as was the case on this night – even if there was not a complete Russian born cast.
Jonathan Kent’s production, based in Rome around 1800, is in its tenth (or is it eleventh) revival. This awkward two tier production has lasted well, but is now tiring. Surely it is time to invest in a new grand staging of this most famous of operas.
Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chenier, often regarded as the poor relation of the 19th century Verismo operas, had its first revival at the ROH since David McVicar’s 2015 controversial new production. This opera, first performed in 1896 at La Scala Milan, is a story based on the life of the French poet, Andrea Chenier, who was executed during the French revolution in 1794.
Hans Werner Henze died at the age of 86 in 2012. He was a German Atonal Composer and left Germany for Italy in 1953 due to an intolerance toward his left wing politics and homosexuality. He became a member of the Italian communist party and indeed wrote a Requiem in 1968 for Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh. He even spent a year teaching in Cuba. Whilst his father enrolled him in the Hitler Youth, it was clear that music was his forte and after the Second World War he became a Conductor at the Wiesbaden Staatstheater.
It is incredible when in an all-male opera the keenest applause at curtain call is reserved for a lady – the female Director, Deborah Warner. She directs a new production for the ROH, in conjunction with opera houses, both in Madrid and Rome, where this production has already premiered. It is the ROH’s first new staging of this work since Zambello’s 1995 staging. Warner is becoming a bit of a Britten specialist with her brilliant Death in Venice for ENO in memory, with others to follow suit. Here she brings the 1797 timeframe up to the modern era, with costumes by Chloe Obolensky and sets by Michael Levine to match. The abstract staging is based around moving platforms all surrounded by rigging, which at appropriate times move to produce varying levels on the stage, reflecting the different decks of the ship, HMS Indomitable.
The starry eyed opening of Christof Loy’s new production of Verdi’s La forza del destino was triumphant with the world’s greatest singers in the title roles - Anna Netrebko as Leonora, Jonas Kaufman as Don Alvaro and Ludovic Tezier as Don Carlo. This was casting as good as it gets and a really exciting evening was enjoyed by all that were present.
Gounod’s Faust is an opera in five Acts to a French libretto by Barbier & Carre, which debuted in Paris in 1859.
Born in 1854, Leos Janacek was a Czech Composer whose music was inspired by Slavic folk music and contemporaries such as Dvorak. Although his first opera, Jenufa (dedicated to the memory of his young daughter) was first performed in 1904 in the city of Brno, it wasn’t until a revised version of Jenufa was performed in Prague in 1916 that Janacek first received great acclaim - at the age of 62. A year later he met a young married woman (38 years his junior), who inspired him for the remaining years of his life, until his death in 1928.
The three act opera, The Queen of Spades, by Potr Il’yich Tchaikovsky, was based on a short story by Alexander Pushkin, with a libretto by Tchaikovsky’s brother, Modest. The premiere took place at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersberg in 1890.
La traviata had a somewhat complicated beginning. This opera – The Fallen Woman – is a Verdi opera in three acts, adapted from the novel La Dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas. It opened in 1853 at La Fenice in Venice.
Engelbert Humperdinck was born in 1854 and was recognised as a disciple of Wagner. His most famous composition was the opera Hansel and Gretel, which had its World Premiere in Weimar, Germany in 1893, under the baton of Richard Strauss. It was an overwhelming success and even to this day, the sugar-coated musical sounds are sweet to the ear.
Nine months ago I reported on the opening of Barry Kosky’s new take on Carmen. It was unlike anything seen before at the ROH and at many times was visually stunning. However, the problem is that despite some stunning scenes, including a 20 foot black dress train (both long and wide!) for Carmen in the final Act, the production overall lacks warmth in the heat of the Spanish sun and indeed it is cold in its interaction between principals. The constant streaming across the stage steps by principals and chorus does not add to the village or factory atmosphere, as was required by Bizet. However interesting the production appeared to be, it was in fact the collage of the scenes that provided the interest, rather than the visual impact throughout the evening.
