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
I was lucky enough to attend 2 gala concert/recital events this week - one at the ENO Gala Concert, Rosewood Hotel and the other at Kings Place, Kings Cross, London N1 - meeting 3 different young ladies with great careers ahead of them.
Christopher Alden directed this Olivier award winning 2008 production and it still looks as fresh as a daisy. His revival lighting designer this time was Kevin Sleep, who ensured a very visual and colourful production using the change of lighting to good effect, particularly in act 2.
It’s a mess. Not musically, but in Kasper Holten’s last production for the ROH as Artistic Director he really hasn’t come to terms with the complexities of the piece and too many gimmicks abound, which simply do not make sense. His production of Eugene Onegin was poor, but in some respects this production is really awful.
In Jan 2017, Hamburg celebrated the opening at one of the world’s most acoustically advanced concert halls called the Elbphilharmonie or nicknamed Elphi. It is a new glassy construction hovering above a brick base resembling a hoisted sale or water wave on the edge of the river Elbe.
There are tens of thousands of well-meaning operatic compositions that lay in the waste of time. It is extremely difficult to find the template required for a new work that does more than just have its ‘premiere’.
This was the main operatic success of the composer, Francesco Cilea. He has given us wonderful orchestration and at times a rather long drawn out melody, but it is not a score of gripping intensity or passion, despite the story of the celebrated Parisian actress who’s love for the handsome Count is met by a rival who eventually kills her with poison.
An old friend is back. To see Jonathan Miller’s Rigoletto return to the stage was a great comfort. It has been intelligently revived by Elaine Tyler-Hall and the sets (particularly the art deco at the beginning of Act I and in Act II) as well as the bar scene in Act III are clear, precise and still very relevant today.
My original review of Rosenkavalier was sent on 21 December and there is no further addition to the production, but there are 2 significant changes to the cast, namely the new Marschallin of Rachel Willis-Sorensen and the Octavian of Anna Stephany.
What a supremely beautiful opera house in Wiesbaden. It is small (probably around 1,000 seats) with a great quality of sound. This opera is the second in the Ring Cycle, albeit was Wagner's third in order of conception. He had worked backwards from planning an opera about Siegfried's death and in doing so he needed another opera to tell of his conception.
What a glorious night of opera. Of course, the music to Richard Strauss’s Rosenkavalier is full of the grandest of liqueur. It was written in 1911 as one of the greatest of social comedies, with a reflective libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It was first conducted at the Royal Opera House in 1913 by Thomas Beecham.
The original novel, Manon Lescaut, written by French author, Abbe Prevost, was banned upon publication in 1731. A similar treatment to the production by Jonathan Kent would not have gone amiss.
Alban Berg’s work Lulu is rarely performed. With Schoenberg as a teacher, the music from this second Viennese composer is 12 note music and atonal. The opera was left unfinished at Berg’s death in 1935 and the complete opera was not performed in its entirety until 1979 when the Paris Opera, under the baton of Pierre Boulez, brought the whole 3 acts to a wider audience.
This wonderful Offenbach opera had, as its original director in 1980, John Schlesinger. This brilliant production is still going, even if at this moment it is looking slightly tired. This is the last time...
