The Glyndebourne Fetival has announced its next-season plans somewhat earlier than usual. Press release below.
In the 400th anniversary year of the death of William Shakespeare, the 2016 Glyndebourne Festival will present two operas based on his work.
Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict, adapted from Much Ado About Nothing, will have its fully-staged Glyndebourne debut in a new production directed by Laurent Pelly.
Glyndebourne has previously performed the work in concert at the Royal Festival Hall in 1993 when the Festival relocated there while a new opera house was built.
Berlioz had a great passion for Shakespeare, whose plays inspired some of his greatest works including a King Lear overture, his great dramatic symphony Roméo et Juliette and some smaller vocal works based on excerpts from Hamlet.
Glyndebourne Music Director Robin Ticciati, an ardent champion of Berlioz, will conduct the opera and said: “In Béatrice et Bénédict we see Berlioz responding to his great love of Shakespeare. It’s a magical piece which fizzes with texture and lightness and it will be a great pleasure to conduct the opera’s first full staging at Glyndebourne.”
French mezzo soprano Stéphanie d’Oustrac will make her role debut as Béatrice opposite the US tenor Paul Appleby, a leading artist at The Metropolitan Opera, who makes his UK debut this month in the 2015 Glyndebourne Festival production of Handel’s Saul.
The second Shakespeare offering sees a return for Peter Hall’s enduringly popular 1981 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, receiving its first revival in ten years.
An impressive ensemble cast has been assembled including bass Matthew Rose as Bottom, countertenor Tim Mead as Oberon and coloratura soprano Kathleen Kim as Tytania. Kazushi Ono, last seen at Glyndebourne in the 2012 Ravel double bill, will conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream will also provide the inspiration for a Glyndebourne Youth Opera project featuring new compositions from Glyndebourne’s Young Composer in Residence, Lewis Murphy.
David Pickard, General Director of Glyndebourne, said: “Shakespeare’s work has inspired artists of all genres and generations; opera is no exception. Given Robin Ticciati’s passion for Berlioz there seemed no better time to present a full staging of Béatrice et Bénédict. I’m also delighted that we’re offering another chance to experience a true Glyndebourne classic, Peter Hall’s timeless A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
Glyndebourne’s Shakespeare commemorations continue into the 2017 Glyndebourne Festival with the world premiere of a new opera based on Hamlet. Composed by Brett Dean, one of the most celebrated international composers of his generation, it features a libretto by Canadian writer and theatre director Matthew Jocelyn.
Dean’s first, and only other opera Bliss premiered to great acclaim in Sydney in 2010 and was performed at the Edinburgh International Festival the same year.
Composer Brett Dean said: ‘‘Shakespeare’s Hamlet is obviously one of the greatest, richest, most influential texts of all time. It is a story that exists, like a delicate membrane, at the very cusp of different states, as epitomised by its most famous lines: to be or not to be. Questions of life and death, life and afterlife, action and inaction, loyalty and deceit, madness and sanity, tragedy and comedy all live side by side in precarious proximity. My hunch is that this mysterious border-town between existence and oblivion is a place where music can be found.”
Hamlet will be conducted by Vladimir Jurowski making his first return to Glyndebourne since completing his tenure as Music Director in 2013. Neil Armfield will direct the production with Allan Clayton in the title role leading a cast which also includes Barbara Hannigan, Sarah Connolly and John Tomlinson.
All of Glyndebourne’s planned Shakespeare events are part of the Shakespeare400 campaign, coordinated by King’s College London. Visit Shakespeare400.org
Rest of Festival 2016
The 2016 Glyndebourne Festival opens on 21 May with the return of David McVicar’s acclaimed 2011 production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, a landmark in the company’s performance history that fulfilled founder John Christie’s dream to stage the opera at Glyndebourne.
Robin Ticciati will conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra for his first ever Wagner opera. The distinguished Canadian baritone Gerald Finley, who began his career in the Glyndebourne Chorus, returns to the role of Hans Sachs, with American soprano Amanda Majeski as Eva. Canadian-German tenor Michael Schade makes his Glyndebourne debut as Walther von Stoltzing.
Then follows the season’s second new production, Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, based on the first of Beaumarchais’ ‘Figaro Trilogy’ of plays.
Not seen at Glyndebourne since 1994, Il barbiere di Siviglia will be directed by Annabel Arden and conducted by Enrique Mazzola, reuniting the creative team behind Glyndebourne’s popular production of L’elisir d’amore, which premiered in the 2007 Glyndebourne Tour. The production stars two Glyndebourne favourites; the internationally acclaimed lyric soprano Danielle de Niese as Rosina and Italian buffo baritone Alessandro Corbelli as Dr Bartolo. The award-winning young German baritone Björn Bürger will make his Glyndebourne debut in the title role.
Beaumarchais’ second ‘Figaro Trilogy’ play also appears at the 2016 Festival with the return of Michael Grandage’s 2012 production of Le nozze di Figaro. The revival features Glyndebourne debuts by South African soprano Golda Schultz as Countess Almaviva and Italian baritone Davide Luciano as Figaro. Italian soprano Rosa Feola, who made a memorable Glyndebourne debut as Sandrina in La finta giardiniera in the 2013 Glyndebourne Tour, will play Susanna for her first Festival appearance.
The Festival 2016 line-up is completed by a revival of Melly Still’s 2012 production of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. The lead female roles will be taken by Slavic singers; Russian soprano Elena Tsallagova, who sang the role of Nanetta in Falstaff for Glyndebourne in 2009 and 2013, plays Vixen Sharp Ears, and Czech soprano Alžbĕta Poláčková makes her Glyndebourne debut as the Fox. English baritone Christopher Purves will play the Forester and the Czech conductor Jakub Hrůša conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Josef Hopferwieser, a stalwart tenor of the Vienna State Opera, has died at 77.
He used to sing while spraying cars. That earned him a voice scholarship in Graz.
He joined Vienna as a Heldentenor soloist in 1973 and sang on to his retirement in 1998, giving 472 performances in 35 roles.
He appeeared as Tenor/Bacchus (Ariadne auf Naxos), Matteo and Graf Elemér (Arabella), Herod and Narraboth (Salome), Sänger und Wirt (Der Rosenkavalier) – famously, in the Carlos Kleiber video – Walther von Stolzing (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), Stimme des Seemanns (Tristan und Isolde), Laïos (Oedipe), Buryja (Jenufa), Max (Der Freischütz), Erik (Der fliegende Holländer) and Alfred (Die Fledermaus).
I’ve never recommended an album before for single track, but there has to be a first time…
This is a personal best, possibly a world record. Never, in four decades of reviewing, have I urged readers to buy a record for just six minutes of music, nor can I think of anyone else who has.
Here’s what you have to do. Skip the opening track of this album of incidental theatre music, a scrappy overture originally intended as a prelude to the second symphony. Shut your eyes and, as track two starts, you will find …
Read my Album of the Week on sinfinimusic.com here.
What conductors wear in Baden-Baden.
This won’t help.
Police are seeking an armed robber who burst into the Greek National Opera box office in central Athens on Wednesday morning and forced the cashier to hand over 11,000 euros, the GNO said over the weekend.
Seattle, WA – The Seattle Symphony announced today that Ludovic Morlot’s contract as Music Director has been extended for two additional years, through August 2019. Morlot’s original six-year agreement was from September 2011 through August 2017.
President & CEO Simon Woods commented, “Under Ludovic Morlot’s leadership, this organization has experienced an extraordinary transformation. The music making on stage has been electrifying and inspirational, but what has further distinguished the Morlot era to date is a commitment to expanding the repertoire, challenging traditional programming boundaries and opening up Benaroya Hall to our community. We are proud to have a music director who so deeply and personally embraces the forward-looking values for which the Seattle region is known.”
“This orchestra and Seattle itself have become an integral part of my life,” Morlot said. “I feel privileged to work with such an inspired and dynamic group of musicians; together we’ve made tremendous strides. I look forward to deepening my relationship with them further, building on our successes, and to working in tandem with the Symphony’s fine leadership and administrative team to welcome one and all to Benaroya Hall.”
The Hon Jesse Norman, MP
Chair
House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport committee
Dear Jesse Norman
Sorry to be a few days late in congratulating you on the committee chairmanship. Your father, Torquil, who restored the Roundhouse as an arts centre, must be so proud.
I am writing in the matter of English National Opera, urging you to call an inquiry into its present lamentable decapitation – no chairman, chief executive or artistic director, and an incoming music director who’s feeling rather abandoned. How did a national treasure get into that deplorable situation?
Briefly, under its last short-term chairman, Peter Bazalgette, ENO ran up a huge debt. Bazalgeete moved swiftly on to become chairman of Arts Council England where – with a sinner’s arrogance – he has been pressuring ENO to sack its artistic director, John Berry, whom he blamed for the overspend – and for other executive departures.
John Berry resigned on Friday. He’s your first witness.
This has been an appalling saga of administrative negligence in the face of artistic vision. The Arts Council needs to be called to account, not just Bazalgette (who is required to leave the room when ENO is discussed) but the former chief executive Alan Davey who played the Wolfgang Schäuble role in the ball-squeezing scenario. The ACE has been party to a putsch.
Your next witness should be the former music director, Edward Gardner, who was caught in a vice of international pressures. Followed by Henriette Götz, who lasted less than a year as executive director. More heads have rolled than anywhere outside IS control.
The full story of backroom threats and boardroom helplessness needs to be aired if ENO is to recover its rightful place as the people’s opera house. Call an inquiry, please. Call Slipped Disc if you need more information.
best wishes
Norman Lebrecht
The splendid English mezzo Sarah Walker has been talking to us about her experiences with Jon Vickers in the Elijah Moshinsky ROH production of Handel’s Samson in 1986.
It was my third enagement at Covent Garden and there was all sorts of things we had to be terribly careful about. Everything was built around Jon. Julius Rudel, the conductor, would start Total Eclipse at a nice baroque pace and Jon would come in and it would just get slower and slower. Wonderful.
I arrived one afternoon to do Micah’s aria Return O Lord of Hosts and the people on the rehearsal desk all said to me, be very careful, don’t put any decorations in.
So I go on stage, facing the auditorium, and Jon is behind me on the trolley.
I start the aria and it’s going well and then, somehow, I slip in a little decoration.
Behind me, I hear this little rustle of chains. Believe me, I didn’t do it again.
Afterwards I asked around what it was about. Apparently that morning, Delilah – Carol Vaness – had been doing all sorts of decorations and there was a huge explosion from Jon. He stormed up to (the manager) John Tooley’s office and said it was against his religion to decorate the oratorio.
This, said Jon, was God speaking through Handel. You don’t mess around with that.
Anyway, it was around my birthday. We lived in SE London and you don’t normally get people coming all the way out to Catford for a party. Jon, his wife and Julius all came. Jon brought me a volume of Constable paintings.
He was really nice to me. Maybe because I was a mezzo. He might not have been so nice to a soprano.
(c) Sarah Walker/Slipped Disc
The British Library has been given a recording made of the composer’s first appearance at the BBC Proms – as soloist in the premiere of his piano concerto. Britten later rewrote the third movement, so the document is a rare isight into a work in progress. More here from the curator, Jonathan Summers.
Aaron Lane, a promising musician from Newark, Notts, was admitted to the Royal Academy of Music seven years ago, when he was 24. But a history of mental illness took its toll. He became homeless, returned to Newark, was sectioned under the Mental Health Act and lived on social benefits.
He was being treated for psychosis when the Department for Work and Pensions declared him fit to work. Soon after, Aaron was found dead in his flat. He was 31. An inquest will be held in December.
Ernie Maresca, who wrote a dozen backdrops to my childhood, has died at 76. Here’s one:
Joining Ernie in the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Eternity is Michael Masser, who wrote for Whitney Houston, Diana Ross and Roberta Flack, among others. He was 79.
