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
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.
Oh what a disaster. Anything that could go wrong indeed did go wrong and it wasn’t the fault of the opera company! The original Gilda had cancelled and the American soprano, Andrea Carroll, who has performed at Garsington, provided some of the best singing as Gilda, in an otherwise sparse vocal evening.
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.
Once more the National Opera Studio comes up trumps in its joint production, with the Welsh National Opera, of ‘Devotion and Desire’. This programme was directed by Emma Jenkins, whose career started as a staff director at the English National Opera, but has also more recently included work with the WNO, where she has directed the NOS residency for the last three years.
