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
Giuseppe Verdi’s premiere of the opera Simon Boccanegra in Venice in 1857 was not a popular success. Indeed it was not until a major revision unveiled in 1881 in Milan, that Boccanegra finally became part of the standard operatic repertoire – a quarter of a century after its opening.
In a remarkable career spanning six decades, Giuseppe Verdi 1813-1901, composed nearly 30 operas, at least half of which are at the core of today’s repertoire. His Requiem, premiered in 1874, stands as a unique testimony to his artistic and human vision and is a setting of the text for the Roman Catholic mass for the dead as it existed until its revision in 1970.
Götterdämmerung, the last of the four operas making up Wagner’s Ring Cycle, held our breath throughout the six and a half hours of operatic intensity. Keith Warner’s production comes to its sizzling end as the ring and the gold is once more returned to its home with the rhinemaidens, beautifully, and finally fleshily, played by Lauren Fagan, Christina Bock and Angela Simkin.
Die Walkure is the second part of Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle and is based on Norse mythology, where a Valkyrie is a female figure who decides in battle which soldier shall live or die. It received its premiere in Munich in 1870 and was first presented as part of the complete Ring Cycle in 1876 in Bayreuth.
Rheingold is the first of four operas that constitute Wagner’s der Ring Des Nibelungen and was premiered in Munich in 1869. Wagner wrote the Ring librettos in reverse order, with Rheingold last but the first to be set to music. The premiere of the whole Ring Cycle was at the Bayreuth in 1876.
Not particularly well received at its premiere, as with others he directed, specifically Meistersingers, Kasper Holten’s production of Don Giovanni, revived by Amy Lane, becomes a much more interesting and user friendly production third time round.
Giuseppe Verdi had written 27 operas by the time he started a four year project to in 1889 to write only his second comedy opera. His first comedy work ‘Un giormo di regno’ was staged unsuccessfully in 1840 and Rossini, a great admirer of Verdi, commented that he thought him incapable of writing a comedy. Verdi was concerned that at his advanced age, to start a new substantial project was a real risk. However, such was his profile that at the world premiere of Falstaff at La Scala Milan in early 1893, the huge success of his work was recognised with an applause lasting almost an hour.
Richard Jones must be delighted by this latest outing of his 2017 new production of La Bohème. The production is tighter and clearer. He and his designer Stewart Laing have put a huge amount of effort into the Act 2 Café Momus scene. It is outstanding, as he provides 3 shopping arcades on the stage, which eventually move apart as the Café Momus set arrives for the main part of that Act.
The collaboration between the Royal Opera and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama was established in 2013 as an opportunity for one composer every two years to research and write a major operatic work. Na’ama Zisser is the second such composer in residence, and she studied at the Royal College of Music under Turnage. Together with her sister Rachel and her partner Samantha Newton, who jointly wrote the libretto, they have structured a new chamber opera called Mamzer Bastard.
Lohengrin is a romantic three act opera, written by Richard Wagner and first performed in Weimar in 1850 under the patronage of King Ludwig. It was indeed this patronage that gave Wagner the means and opportunity to compose and build a theatre for and stage his epic cycle, the Ring of the Nibelung.
This four act opera by Dmitry Shostakovich was premiered in 1934 in St Petersburg and two days later in Moscow. It is the story of a lonely woman in 19th century Russia, who falls in love with one of her husband’s workers and is driven to murder. It was condemned in 1936 and banned in the Soviet Union for almost 30 years.
Verdi’s first version of Macbeth was completed in 1847. It was his first Shakespeare play that he adapted for the operatic stage. This was a golden period of composition by Verdi stretching 16 years, which saw him produce 22 different operas, including, amongst others, Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata.
Gosh, how depressing! Leos Janacek wrote his opera, From the House of the Dead, in the year of his death in 1928. The opera is effectively a play within a play, set in a Siberian prison, where individual prisoners narrate episodes of their lives.
Tear up the rule book! The Australian opera Director, Barry Kosky, is in town and gives us a new take on Carmen, quite unlike anything you will have seen before.
If this is how the Royal Opera House is starting 2018, then we are in for a vintage year.
Oscar Wilde’s original French play Salome, translated into German all in one Act, is just under 2 hours of intense brutality and unyielding musical brilliance, built on a theme of eroticism and murder. It was first performed in Dresden in 1905 and Gustav Mahler himself wanted to conduct the opera in Vienna, but in fact the censors refused consent and did not relent until 1918. It was initially banned in London until performed at Covent Garden under the baton of Thomas Beecham in 1910.
If the French had anything to do with it, Rigoletto would never have been performed. Based on Victor Hugo’s play ‘Le roi s’amuse’, where Verdi described the subject matter of the play as ‘immense’, it was highly controversial as it depicted the King of France as an immoral and cynical womaniser. As a result, the opera had to undergo many changes before the censors allowed it to be performed, opening at La Fenice in Venice in 1851. Even though the King of France was deleted from the opera – he was converted to the Duke of Mantua – the opera was banned in France and not performed there until 1882.
Gioachino Rossini was born in 1792 and was a prodigious composer of operas – composing 39 altogether. At the age of 31 he composed his last opera in Italy, being Semiramide, which had its premiere in 1823 in Venice. The music recreated the Baroch tradition of decorative singing with unparalleled skill. The ensemble scenes, particularly the duos between Arsace and Semiramide, together with the choruses, are of an extremely high order.
These two operas, Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni and Pagliacci by Rugerro Leoncavallo, both had their world premieres in the last decade of the 19th century and in fact were first staged as a double bill at the Metropolitan Opera New York in December 1893. They have both been hugely successful as a duet and indeed the original Director of this revival, Damiano Michieletto, has brought a common theme to the two operas, relocating them both to a small town in Southern Italy, with a bakery for the Cav and a community hall for the Pag.
Lucia di Lammermoor was Donizetti’s 46th opera written in 1835 and based on Sir Walter Scott’s similarly titled novel. It was premiered in Naples in its original Italian version, but very soon thereafter a French version (which is rarely performed) was commissioned for the Paris Opera. Many of the great sopranos have sung the role of Lucia, some of whom have made their career as a result, such as Melba, Callas, Sutherland, Anderson, Serra, Gruberova and more recently, Damrau and Dessay.
What is a banker in operatic terms? This is not a financial question! Stand up Richard Jones for producing a La Boheme banker for the Royal Opera House, which will undoubtedly be performed for many years to come, but I imagine not as much as the wonderful old production by John Copley.
