The Telegraph has announced that Rupert Christiansen will be stepping down as opera critic this month. Christiansen, 66, was hired in the mid-1990s boom from the Spectator.

Chris Evans, the Telegraph’s editor, said: ‘Rupert Christiansen is the finest opera critic in the land and our readers have enjoyed his reviews for the past 25 years. We will miss him and wish him well for the future.’

No replacement has been named.

Rupert explains his decision here.

Rare studio footage from 1965.

Nelson has not been heard for a year since undergoing surgery on his right arm, following a fall.

A fresh-baked memoir from composer Michael Robinson:

…. My position was lost, after several warnings for wearing white socks, when my girlfriend at the time secured front row center seats for the visiting Los Angeles Philharmonic with Carlo Maria Giulini at the very famed hall where I was employed. This was an opportunity not to be missed, believing it would be OK to take a night off from ushering, but the manager unfortunately spotted me in the lobby prior to the concert, and I was immediately sacked….

Read on here.

 

Hard on her recent anniversary, we are delighted to publish a major study by the Polish scholar Aleksander Hanslik:

A PIANIST “d’execution transcendante”

Remembrance of Maria Yudina on the 50th anniversary of her death

Aleksander Hanslik

It is November 19, 1961, concert hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. On the stage comes a petite woman with dark hair, strong features, dressed in a black coat of an orthodox nun. She plays a great recital; in the program, among others, Beethoven’s 32 variations in C minor, Stravinsky’s Piano Sonata, pieces of Ernst Křenek and Anton Webern. The hall reacts with enthusiasm and expects encores. The pianist stands in front of the piano and reads the poetry of her friend Boris Pasternak.

After that, Maria Yudina, one of the greatest personalities of 20th century pianists, never played at the Leningrad Philharmonic.

In a letter to Konstantin Fiedin (1926) Maxim Gorki writes: “From physical suffering we are healed by doctors, with increasing success, from moral sufferings by Tolstoy, Dostoyevski and others…”. He calls them “village healers”. Maria Yudina decided to be just such a soul-healer.

Writing about Yudina is therefore writing of both of her phenomenal pianistic art and as well as of her moral (religious) mission, to which she subordinated her musical activity.

The life stories of even the greatest performers are mostly reduced to a list of the most important recordings and a short biographical note. In the case of Maria Yudina, we have not only a wealth of recordings, but also an yet analytically unprocessed legacy of correspondence, articles, essays, testimonies of witnesses of her musical-social-religious activity. Her correspondence itself (Perepiski) with great figures of Russian and Western culture and ideas, including Pasternak, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Bachtin, Stockhausen, Serocki, Florensky, Adorno, N. Mandelstam, are seven volumes  released in Russia between 2006 and 2013.

The story of Maria Yudina is a touch on two phenomena of Russian culture of 20th century: virtuosity and mysticism embedded in her case in the orthodox messianism. The cosmos of Maria Yudina is therefore a world of music, religion and literature – she called this world “Theme with variations”, in which the theme is a man passing through life (variations) – aiming for eternity (M. Drozdova).

Choosing such a path in the worst possible times for the freedom of the individual (in the times of Stalin, and even later, until the death of the pianist) had, of course, its price, which she was willing to pay at any time. The price were repressions “as usual”, such as expulsion from the music conservatory or prohibition of concerts, although she avoided the worst fate of those times, despite her steadfast and intrepid attitude as a musician, and as a “preacher”.

Writing about Yudina requires portraying her great musical personality and her social and-religious mission, reaching beyond the attractive myths – such as in the film Death of Stalin (Iannucci, 2017) or in a note about Yudina in the album The Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century (Philips/Steinway). These myths boil down to attractive but unproven associations such as “Maria Yudina – Joseph Stalin’s favorite pianist” or a film image, in which we see a scene replaying her recording over and over again of Mozart’s Piano Concert A-dur KV 488 at the time the dead Stalin was found, a bloody dictator and otherwise a lover of music.

Yudina’s youth is an archetype of a biography of the great revolutionaries women in Russia in the early 20th century, or, as Hanna Krall, who described their fate, says: “distraught, fevered Jewish women” (after Simone Weil).

Her fervor was closer to a missionary than to a revolutionary.

So we have a child prodigy, born (as the fourth) on September 9, 1899 in Newel (Vitebsk district), in the family of the respected land doctor Benjamin Gavrilovitch Judin. Newel was a town of deep periphery, but at the same time the tower of Babel of religions, nations, customs (70 percent were Jews, the rest are Belarusians, Lithuanians, Poles). Father of Maria, who was a strong personality, managed to graduate as a poor Jew from medical studies and was a model of service to the society, for which he was awarded in Tsarist Russia by the Order of St. Anne. The family was not strongly associated with the Jewish religion, moreover, the father very much regretted that his beloved daughter had become a religious person; the very choice of faith did not matter to him.

In such a house, little Marusia, as she was called, had contact with a great Russian pianist – her first teacher was Frieda Lewinson, a student of Anton Rubinstein. Carefree childhood ended when, as a thirteen-year-old, she went to  St. Petersburg, where her father decided to put her in a conservatory in the class of Anna Yesipowa, who was a student and wife of Theodore Leschetytski. In St. Petersburg (Petrograd) in 1917, Yudina met Eugenia O. Otten (a religious, intelligence-related literary woman, later sentenced to nineteen years of exile), who introduced her to her religious-philosophical circle (“Resurrection”). This circle was increasing constantly (M.M. Bachtin, M.I. Kagan among others joined it), acted in the most turbulent times for Russia and was of course subject of severe repressions. In 1919, Yudina was baptized into the Orthodox Council, her godfather was the well-known literary critic Leo (Leib) Pumlianski. Since then, the artist’s  priorities have changed radically – she devoted herself to religious service through music and began to wear long black robes.

After a break caused by First World War, revolution and  health problems, Yudina completed her education at the Petersburg Conservatory in 1920 in the class of Professor Leonid W. Nikolaev. She studied, among others, with Dimitri Shostakovich and Vladimir Sofronitsky. Aleksander Glazunov, director of the Conservatory, wrote in his assessment of the diploma concert of Maria Yudina, comprising of works by Bach, Beethoven, Glazunov, Liszt: “Huge and virtuoso talent… Forte sometimes exaggerated… Rating: Very good+”. Excessive forte as an expression of rebellion will return more than once in the pianist’s renditions, which Svyatoslav Richter beautifully describes, mentioning Henryk Neuhaus, who after Yudina’s concert during the war, having heard her excessive fortissimo, asked why is it like that. Yudina replied, “We are at war now !”.

In the 1920s, the pianist threw herself into the philosophy by studying the works of St. Augustine (“hard to read, but I want and I can”) and orthodox theology, mainly in the works of Solovyov and Pavel Florensky, with whom she became friends in 1927. This friendship and Florensky’s death as a victim of Stalinism was of great importance for her spiritual formation and artistic mission. The issues of ethics of Judaism and Christianity were closest to her and led to an attitude full of asceticism and zeal in serving the people – mainly by means of the language of music. She was described as “a pianist of extremes for whom there was no golden mean.” The second most important area of  her interest was literature and theatre (from antiquity to contemporary Russian literature of the turbulent 20s years, then already banned.

Yudina’s solo concert activities began in 1921 with concerts with the orchestra, including Beethoven’s 4th and 5th Piano Concerto, Medtner’s Piano Concerto, Křenek’s and Hindemith’s works. Her extraordinary talent and personality bore the first fruits – on June 25, 1923, she received the position of Professor of the Petersburg (Petrograd) Conservatory.

An important event in Yudina’s life was the conviction and shooting in 1922 of Petrograd Metropolitan along with other clergy. At that time, she decided to always act openly, being aware of the consequences. One of her letters was signed: “Your faithful and dedicated Moscow madwoman, M. Yudina”. “Moscow”, because then she then went to Moscow, fighting for the release of the patriarch Tichon. Since then, she has become an increasing threat to herself. In 1925, in a questionnaire for conservatory pedagogues, when asked about membership and support for the Communist Party, she wrote: “Agreeing on many issues with the Russian Communist Party – I cannot belong to it because of my ideological and religious views.”

Yudina’s historical recital took place on March 9, 1930, in the Great Hall of the Leningrad Philharmonic. In the program were: Beethoven’s Lunar Sonata, and intermezzi Brahms, Chopin’s B minor Sonata, Prokofiev’s IV Sonata and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an exhibition. As witnesses (including Anna Artobolewska) recall, the crowd stood from Nevsky Prospect to the entrance of the philharmonic hall. The concert was received euphorically – alongside the flowers small Russian orthodox icons were passed to Yudina from the hall.

Two days later, the artist was to answer questions from the director of the Leningrad Philharmonic. Her answers, along with comments stigmatizing Yudina, were included in the article titled Nuns’s Habit in the Conservatory in the “Red Newspaper”. At the end of the article, the question was asked: “What is a Soviet high school for today, protesting together with the working class against russian Orthodox and catholic priests, mullahs, and pastors?”. Yudina lost her job at the Leningrad Conservatory on May 6, 1930.

Fortunately for the pianist, friends from Tbilisi helped her secure her life and position at the music conservatory there. She performed in this city with great success, also playing duets with her friend Wladimir Sofronitsky.

Andrei Tarkovsky said that for Russian artists, creativity has always been something of a mission, an ethical duty – it was never about empathizing with virtuosity, formal tricks. And so it was with Maria Yudina – endowed with phenomenal pianistic technique, she used it to paint, as she used to say, “musical icons” at the time of the great human trial. In 1931, she wrote to her spiritual guide, Father Paul Florensky: “I do not understand, why do your respect, Father, my playing, since it is only an endless, screaming sign of despair”.

Maria Yudina belongs to the last generation of absolutely recognizable pianists, it is impossible to confuse her performances of Beethoven’s Sonata “Hammerklavier” or Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D minor with other interpretations. Often described as building the architecture of music (architecture alongside poetry was her passion), she said of herself: “Here is a column, there are arches, here is the rhythm and development in time and space”.

After returning to Moscow in 1933, she began touring again, with great conductors like Dimitri Mitropoulos and Georges Sébastian. She often performed the new works of Soviet composers, for example Prokofiev’s second Piano Concert (1935) with the orchestra conducted by Jascha Horenstein. After this concert the composer gave her, along with thanks, his piece Things in themselves, which Yudina later repeatedly played. This piano concert was performed again in 1935 in the Column Hall of the House of Unions, conducted by Leo Ginzburg and on 28.10.1938 under the direction of Prokofiev in the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory which was acclaimed as “triumphant”.

Despite the repressions for promoting contemporary music, this repertoire was an important chapter in her performances. We can mention, among others, Alban Berg sonatas, Dmitri Shostakovich, Igor Stravinsky or Yuri Shaporin. This fascination is most revealed in the relations and correspondence with Shostakovich and Stravinsky, whom she admired and was the artist who gave the first performances of their works in Russia. After listening to Shostakovich’s XIII Symphony “Babi Yar” she wrote: “We all burn on the pages of this score”.

The 1930s and 1940s, especially the years of war, were a period of her extraordinary artistic activity. Like other great artists, she performed music on The All-Union Radio broadcasted for soldiers on the front lines or factories. After one of the broadcasts, she received a letter: 

We heard Beethoven’s Fantasy in your performance. We are strengthened. Thank you. We allow ourselves to ensure that we will protect Soviet culture, including you. Snipers Antonov and Terentiev”.

Maria Yudina went to her beloved Leningrad during the blockade to give concerts to the besieged population – on the radio and on the front. She wrote: “The muses are not silent in Leningrad”. In 1947, the famous night recording of Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major KV 488 took place with an orchestra conducted by Alexander Gauk. The registration was made upon the instructions of Stalin’s entourage, who, having heard a performance of Mozart’s concerto by Yudina on the radio, wanted the vinyl record. The mystery of this recording becomes increasingly distant, but it is necessary to remember the words of Berdayev: “A myth does not mean the opposite of reality, on the contrary: it reveals a deep reality”. Maybe this recording saved the pianist’s life?

Back in the 1920s, Yudina dreamed of going to Western Europe to get to know the contemporary music that was radiating there, which she so vigorously promoted and paid for another expulsion from the conservatory. This plan failed – the artist only twice received permission to go abroad: in 1950 for the 200th anniversary of Bach’s death to East Germany and in 1954 to Poland to celebrate the anniversary of Soviet-Polish friendship. All subsequent attempts to go to concerts, despite many invitations from all over the world, ended with the silence of ” culture officials”.

Maria Yudina writes about Poland in 1954: ” […] fabulously beautiful journey. Yours from the homeland of Copernicus! Everything very interesting, beautiful, joyful”. The concert program included, among others, Beethoven’s V  Concert, performed with the Silesian’s Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Václav Smetáček. Recently, Yudina recordings made in Polish Radio were found and include Shostakovich Preludes and Fugue and Lutoslawski among others. They will be soon published in Russia.

The Soviet authorities never allowed for the film recordings of her concerts – although there are still a lot of sound recordings left, available e.g. on YouTube, a lot of her heritage found in Russian archives is being released by the old Russian label Melodya, to the amazement and delight of the listeners. Amazement – by the scale of the repertoire: from Bach, Brahms, Schubert, Beethoven (including “Hammerklavier”), Liszt to Shostakovich, Szymanowski, Hindemith or Webern; admiration – by the extraordinary strength of spirit and exceptional technical freedom.

In the Melodya anniversary release of Maria Yudina’s recordings a note was included  – Shostakovich’s famous statement after her performance of his Preludes and Fugues: “This is not what I wrote at all, but please: play it like that. Please – just play it like that !”. Shostakovich’s reaction is the shortest introduction to the description of Maria Yudina’s piano art – metaphysical art, her own and coherent vision of the piece, at the same time full of opposites.

Yudina, according to Dostoyevsky’s saying that “beauty will save the world”, considered her music to be a struggle against evil and a way to salvation. That’s why she often emphasized the “importance of expression” – what can be heard in her immense proportions of sound, pulse and “life of musical form”.

The years 1930-1960 were musically and literally turbulent for the pianist, when she joined the most “dangerous” milieu of Russian poets. As she recalls: “In summer 1940, going to N. Zabolotsky to work with him on translating the lyrics of Schubert’s songs, I met Henryk Neuhaus on the subway, who asked: “Are you also heading to Pasternak?“. “No, I say, not now”. As I’m about to walk up to the subway, Neuhaus grabs my sleeve: “My dear – it is important! Do they pay well for it? Do you know that Tsvetaeva has arrived and is without work ? Give her a job – give her your translation». After two days I was with Tsvetaeva – a dark mansard, […] an atmosphere of an imminent disaster […]”.

The preparations for a concert, in addition to the piano practicing, was complemented by Yudina’s comments – religious – philosophical texts, handwritten in her music sheet, for example, in Bach’s Goldberg Variations, already on the front page of the aria (theme) is her commentary – the words of The Psalm of David (“O how amiable are thy dwellings”).

She expressed a pious attitude towards Bach’s work during the first (and penultimate) concert trip abroad – in 1950 to Leipzig for the Bach jubilee. She then walked barefoot through half of the city to her master’s grave to pay tribute to him. And it wasn’t just a gesture.

A question that will go unanswered – how Maria Yudina survived the time of terror – being a defiant servant of music and people – ready to pay any price for her activity, including being expelled from the conservatory, which she described as “being petty”. If it was a sophisticated revenge of the regime, then it was a successful one – Yudina was prepared for the worst, which she often calmly wrote about, while suffering for the rest of her life, seeing her friends walking away – who were steadfast as herself.

On June, 1, 1960, Yudina was expelled from the Gnesinych Academy in Moscow for „religiousness not conforming with communist morality and for openly propagating the anti-Soviet art such as the works of Stravinsky”. The meeting with the composer – with whom she had only correspondence so far – took place on 6 October of the following year. It was one of the happiest moments of her life.

Yudina’s musical passions are an extremely broad performing spectrum and legacy of recordings: from Bach, Through Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Schumann, Liszt, Debussy, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, Scriabin to Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Berg, Bartok, Webern, Lutoslawski, Serocki, Jolivet. In her last years before death she focused on contemporary and classical composers. She gave concerts with the greatest conductors of that era – Russian and visiting Russia, such as: Gennady Rozhdestvensky, Dmitri Mitropoulos, Georges Sébastian, Kurt Sanderling, Hermann Scherchen, Grzegorz Fitelberg, Otto Klemperer and many others.

Her interpretations are often considered as “masculine” and demonic, although they remain within the framework of intellectual self-discipline and artistic asceticism.

Yudina’s intellectualism was often incomprehensible to contemporaries – her renditions was described as too “rational”. At the same time, she was accused of losing proportions and “playing for herself”. When assessing her interpretations from the point of view of interpretation  canons, one can see the defiant and conscious abandonment of traditional patterns. She wrote: “When the master strives for expressiveness, he does not think about correctness” – but puts together things that do not fit together, sculpts, emphasizes inconsistencies and thus achieves the intended effect”.

Swiatoslav Richter wrote about Yudina: “She had a huge talent … Her performances of romantic music were thrilling… Weinen und Klagen of Liszt sounded unparalleled, but Schubert’s Sonata in B major D 960, which was breathtaking, was played totally “awry”.

The unique combination of the monumental scale and laconism of Yudina’s means of expression remains a mystery. The performance of Beethoven’s Sonata op. 111 is considered one of the most poignant performances of the work in general, and the work itself has become the subject of Yudina’s deep philosophical delving and dispute with Adorno.

Stockhausen wrote of Yudina: “She had a phenomenal sense of the future”. Brodski said that Tsvetaeva is a biblical poet. It can be said of Yudina that she was a biblical pianist, although she did not like, being called a “pianist” – she considered herself a musician “at the service of God”. She often referred in her texts to the Old Testament figure of Tobias and his archangel guardian.

Maria Yudina’s last solo performance took place on March 12, 1968 in the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow and was the culmination of her love for the ancient world and the music of the beloved Stravinsky – she played a piano version of his ballet Orpheus.

In the late 1960s ,Yudina, without the opportunity to tour with her gigantic repertoire, “from Bach to Berg” as she wrote, was looking for work in libraries, cemeteries and post office – “in the telegraph”. Of the job interview in “telegraph”, she writes: “Everyone here wants me, but the human resources department cannot accept me as a retired woman. I will write to the minister”.

She passed away on November 19, 1970 in Moscow.

The announcement of her death, the date and place of the funeral written handwritten on a small piece of paper was pinned to the poster on the door of the Chamber Hall of the Moscow Conservatory . Permission for the mourning ceremony at the Conservatory could only be obtained through Shostakovich’s intercession. It took place in the foyer of the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. Richter, Grinberg, Gornostajewa, among others played at the coffin.

Due to the non-payment of the piano rental, a few days after the funeral at the block where she lived, a crane appeared, with the help of which the old, black, out of key Bechstein piano was raised. Yudina’s piano has been sold a long time ago to help needy friends. 

In difficult moments, and there were many of them, she referred to the poem of her friend Boris Pasternak, ‘To be notable is not fit’:

Others follow in your fresh footsteps

They will cross, know, your trail carefully.

But it’s not proper for you

To distinguish between victories and defeats

The motto of Maria Yudina’s life was: “I know only one way to God – through art. I’m not saying my way is universal, I know there are other ways. For me, however, only this is available”.

*

In drafting this text, I was helped by Marina Anatolevna Drozdova, a student of Maria Yudina in the 1960s, now a professor at the Russian Academy of Music Gnesinych, as well as Marina Drozdova’s book “Maria Yudina – Religious Fate” (Religioznaja sudba) Moscow 2016. I remain deeply grateful for her boundless patience and help.

I also used the published collection of correspondence of Maria Yudina Perepiski (7 volumes), ed. Rosspen, Moscow 2006-2013, and available sources in the public domain.

I would like to thank Hanna Krall, Alexei B, Lubimov and Krzysztof Meyer for their valuable content and editorial suggestions.

Published by permission of PWM- Ruch Muzyczn

Composed as the Second World War was ending in German defeat, Strauss reflects in a meditation for strings on all that has gone wrong in his lifetime and how little an individual musician, no matter how famous, can do to put them right. This act of musical humility by a man of 80 marks a belated onset of benign self-knowedge.

 

Christopher Russell is about to perform the scarcely-heard fifth symphony by the intriguing Leningrad hermit, Galina Ustvolskaya. Chris tells Slipped Disc how this came about:

When California began its lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic last spring, I set myself a personal artistic project to explore some new orchestral repertoire. As a conductor, I’m always on the hunt to discover something new and/or shine a light on some lesser-known music that I believe needs to be heard. I decided my project would be symphony cycles by composers whose complete set I’d not heard before. By the end of the summer, I’d listened to the cycles of 18 different composers totaling 122 symphonies. They included the cycles by Malcolm Arnold, Mozart Camargo Guarnieri, Louise Farrenc, William Grant Still, and even the 10 symphonies by Chinese composer Zhu Jian’er.

One symphony cycle I decided to listen to was of the Russian composer Galina Ustvolskaya (1919-2006). I’d come across her name only in the last ten years or so and knew she had a bit of a cult following. But that’s about it.

Ustvolskaya wrote five symphonies ranging from about eight to 25 minutes. They can all be heard in about 75 minutes. All five have some sort of spoken or sung text with Nos. 2-5 based on religious themes. Ustvolskaya’s music often explored Christianity and she talked about its importance in her life although, by her own admission, she pretty much never set foot inside of a church.

She once said “There is no link whatsoever between my music and that of any other composer whatsoever, living or dead”. At first, I thought this was a fairly arrogant thing to say but the more I explored her music, the more I came to realize that this was an accurate statement. Her unique instrumental combinations, strange harmonies, and repeated blocks of sound make for a unique listening experience. It quickly drew me in.

 

I’m an Associate Professor and the orchestra conductor at Azusa Pacific University, near Los Angeles. With the pandemic still raging through the summer, we followed most universities in California and moved our fall semester completely online. Obviously, this made for wild challenges in trying to do orchestra online via Zoom where even getting two people to play together is pretty much impossible. With my fall concert plans thrown out the window, I had to come up with some repertoire alternatives that focused on recording projects. I decided it was best and most manageable to divide the full orchestra into different-sized chamber orchestras. Coming off of my summer listening project, Ustvolskaya’s music came to mind as being both worth doing and doable in our new circumstances. Her Symphony No.5 “Amen” seemed a perfect fit.

The symphony is scored for only five instruments: oboe, trumpet, tuba, violin, and wooden cube. It also includes an actor who recites the Lord’s Prayer. It will be in English, not the original Russian, as Ustvolskaya said it can be done in the language of the performers.

Ustvolskaya also left specific instructions in the score for building the wooden cube. Her official website is very specific that she wanted this instrument to be a cube, not some coffin-shaped object as seen in other performances. Since most places don’t have wooden cubes built to her exact specifications lying around, the Operations Manager at our School of Music set out to construct one. I tried our newly-completed cube the other day and it sounds terrific. I am smiling under my mask.

I’ve worked with all the players on the symphony and they are also taken with Ustvolskaya’s singular sound world. We’re in the process of recording it with a goal of releasing the video next month.

There’s something completely compelling about this music. It doesn’t unfold the way a symphony is “supposed to”. It makes complete sense when you realize this is one person pouring out their heart to God. Prayers don’t typically follow sonata form. Thus, you’re taken on this personal and powerfully unique listening experience.

 

The tenor has been added to a Salzburg puppet show. He thinks it’s ‘super’.

Watch news report here.

The video is quite well made.

The Mannes School of Music has reported the death of Elena Leonova, an outstanding piano teacher who founded the New York Piano Society.

No cause of death has been disclosed. Leonova was 71.

 

 

 

The Liverpool Phil has just rolled out 40 concerts between January and March 2021. The charge is £10 per stream or 5 for £45.

The Halle is charging £96 for 9 concerts.

A Brexit consensus seems to be forming around the £10 mark.

But will there be enough viewers when the Vienna Opera and half of Scandinavia are streaming for free?

 

UPDATE: The Royal Opera House has just rolled out its offer, with variable pricing:

ROH logo.jpg
4 December 2020

#OurHouseToYourHouse

Royal Opera House unveils biggest programme of streamed ballet and opera in its history, just in time for Christmas

The Royal Opera House today announces its biggest ever programme of streaming and digital content, across a range of platforms, brought straight from our house to your house and available throughout the Christmas period.

With free online broadcasts from our archives, live pay per view performances from our beautiful Covent Garden theatre, and an array of cultural highlights across Netflix, Now TV, YouTube, Scala Radio, Sky Arts, Marquee TV and the BBC, it has never been easier for audiences to access the world’s best ballet and opera anywhere, anytime.

Live performances, broadcast directly from our stages, continue apace at the Royal Opera House and we are delighted to present a roster of festive operatic highlights in The Royal Opera Christmas Concert. Presented by Roderick Williams and conducted by Mark Wigglesworth, this live concert features world-class talent in work by composers including Rossini, Puccini and Mozart. With the addition of highlights from Humperdinck’s tuneful Hansel and Gretel and Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on Christmas Carols, this performance promises to complete your Christmas viewing experience this year.

Our programme of online broadcasts, available via the ROH website, continues throughout December, featuring archive favourites from The Royal Ballet including Frederick Ashton’s Enigma Variations (2019), a showcase for the expressiveness of The Royal Ballet’s dancers, and Christopher Wheeldon’s family favourite Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2017). The Royal Opera also present the 2020 revival of Richard Jones’ 2017 production of Puccini’s La bohème, starring Sonya Yoncheva as Mimì, Charles Castronovo as Rodolfo, Andrzej Filończyk as Marcello and Simona Mihai as Musetta with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and the Royal Opera Chorus conducted by Emmanuel Villaume.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without The Nutcracker, and we are excited to present archive productions of this festive favourite in cinemas, in association with Scala Radio, Marquee TV, Sky Arts, Now TV, and on demand through the Royal Opera House’s new partnership with Netflix. Netflix viewers can also experience the very best of opera as we present Richard Jones’ 2017 production of La bohème, starring Nicole Car and Michael Fabiano and conducted by Antonio Pappano.

Royal Opera House productions will also be available to watch and listen to as part of our ongoing partnership with the BBC, with The Royal Opera’s Ariodante in Concert (2020), The Royal Opera Christmas Concert (2020) and Verdi’s Falstaff (2018), starring Bryn Terfel in the title role, all broadcast over the Christmas period on BBC Radio 3. Both The Royal Opera and The Royal Ballet’s all-star gala performances from September and October of this year will also be available to watch on BBC Four. The Royal Opera All Star Gala features much-loved classics of the repertory by Bellini, Bizet, Donizetti, Dvořák, Puccini, Rossini and Verdi; and The Royal Ballet All Star Gala shines a light on the acclaimed artistry and virtuosity of our dancers as well as the dazzling breadth of the Company’s repertory.

We’re also delighted to offer two favourites from the Royal Opera House repertory on YouTube for free this Christmas: The Royal Opera’s The Magic Flute (2017) and The Royal Ballet’s Don Quixote (2019) both showcase our resident companies at their musical, choreographic and theatrical best with stunning designs and sets, and world-class performances.

A raft of recent productions from both artistic companies will also be available for audiences to watch on Now TV. From The Royal Ballet will be: The Nutcracker (2016); The Sleeping Beauty (2017); a Frederick Ashton mixed programme including The Dream, Symphonic Variations and Marguerite and Armand (2017); Will Tuckett’s sumptuous presentation of the life and loves of Queen Elizabeth I, in Elizabeth (2016); as well as Kenneth MacMillan’s three-act, full-length work based on story of Anna Anderson, a woman who believed herself to be the daughter of the last Tsar of Russia, in Anastasia (2016). Favourites from The Royal Opera will also be available via the platform, including Verdi’s searing tragic opera Il trovatore (2016); Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (2017); Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann (2016); Mozart’s Così fan tutte (2016) as well as Bellini’s operatic masterpiece Norma (2017).

On Sky Arts, audiences can watch The Royal Ballet in: The Nutcracker (2016); Giselle (2016); Frederick Ashton mixed programme including The Dream, Symphonic Variations and Marguerite and Armand (2017); Anastasia (2016); The Sleeping Beauty (2017) and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2017).

World-class productions from The Royal Ballet including The Nutcracker (2016), The Sleeping Beauty (2017) and Rhapsody (2016) also continue to be permanently available via Marquee TV.

For more details of all ROH broadcasts, creative activities and unique content, follow #OurHouseToYourHouse or visit our website.

ENDS

***

Notes to Editors

At a glance:

From the Royal Opera House

Stream The Royal Opera Christmas Concert

Broadcast live on Friday 18 December at 7pm GMT, available for 30 days
£10 per online ticket
Images available here.
Enigma Variations (2019)

Available for 30 days via stream.roh.org.uk from 7pm on Friday 4 December
£3 per ticket
Images available here.
The Nutcracker (2016)

Available to see in cinemas from Thursday 10 December.
Selection of The Nutcracker images here.
La bohème (2020)

Available for 30 days via stream.roh.org.uk from 7pm on Friday 11 December
£3 per ticket
Images available here.
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (2017)

Available for 30 days via stream.roh.org.uk from 7pm Friday 1 January
£3 per ticket
Images available here.

The conductor Karel Mark Chichon has been awarded Latvian citizenship for ‘special merit’ (the citation said) in his efforts to raise the reputation of Latvian music abroad.

Chichon is married to the Latvian mezzo star Elīna Garanča.

 

The much admired André Gagnon has died of a neurogeneraive condition.

Aside from success as a composer, he played piano for visiting French chansonniers such as Georges Moustaki and played Mozart concertos with the Montreal orchestras.


The leading Dutch composer will watch tomorrow’s premiere of his final composition, titled ‘May’, from a care home. Its intended premiere in May was postponed due to Covid-19.

Andriessen, 81, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after a fall at the beginning of this year.

The new choral work begins:

A new spring and a new sound:

I want this song to sound like the whistle

That I often heard for a summer night

In an old town, along the water canal.

His wife, Monica Germino, writes:

Words fail when trying to thank all of the people who made this possible, the indescribable outpouring of love and dedication surrounding the man and the music. The course of Louis’ illness is intertwined with the history and creation of May, set against the chaotic background of a world in turmoil and in the throes of a pandemic. It’s impossible to reach everyone in these lonely days of disconnect. A reason to speak now is to bring people closer together in dark times, and closer to Louis and his extraordinary life. Louis cast a wide net. He touched so many lives with his notes, his brilliance, his generosity.

UPDATE: Andriessen was a storm force in Dutch music. An electronic studio that he formed in 1969 with the pianist Reinbert de Leeuw and the jazz pianist Misha Mengelberg, followed by an avant-garde ensemble, blew fresh ideas into stuffy concert halls and put music from the Netherlands on the world map for the first time in five centuries. His sad senescence will be widely regretted.