Prague has 3 opera houses, London one
OperaAlexander Goldscheider czechs out the latest scene stealers:
Prague’s opera life has blossomed in the last years and its ambition has been fruitful. Three opera houses – National Theatre, Estates Theatre and the State Opera – are staging not just operas, but major projects like the four-year Musica non grata revival of composers persecuted by the Nazis, as well as festivals like Opera Nova that started this weekend.
Per Boye Hansen, the Norwegian director of Prague’s three opera venues since 2018, systematically involves international and Czech artists. The current Opera Nova festival features world premieres by Jiří Trtík (Kafka’s Letter to His Father), Šimon Voseček (Ogres) and Charles Baumstark (Les Papillons de Terezín). Dani Howard’s The Yellow Wallpaper premiered last August in Copenhagen and later enjoyed great acclaim at Sadler’s Wells.
The Opera Nova kicked off with the 1996 version of György Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre at the State Opera. Both in spite and because of it being still so very avantgarde, the first of two premieres on Friday was an unqualified success. Its stage director, set and costume designer in one person is the British Nigel Lowery with the young Czech conductor Jiří Rožeň making a huge contribution. Ligeti’s anti-antiopera is demanding for everyone: the orchestra, singers and, quite frankly, the public.
Those unfamiliar with Ligeti, and there were quite a few on Friday, were rather shocked right from the onset by the overture for 12 car horns, which later seems rather normal compared to the impossible array of what is labelled as percussions and involves just about anything not classified as a music instrument, from paper to pots and pans and metronome played at the wrong tempo. Jiří Rožeň is making his name by concentrating on modern operas and he certainly inspired and controlled the impressive orchestra. He had at his disposal an excellent cast with admirable Thor Inge Fatch, Arnheiður Eiríksdóttir, Magdaléna Hebousse, Marcus Jupither, Ivo Hrachovec, Victoria Khoroshunova and, last in this selection, but not least, Eir Inderhaug. The State Opera Chorus, so fabulous in Nabucco earlier this year, did not disappoint.
Allow me to be personal: I emigrated from Prague in 1981, having witnessed a decline of modern music life after the Soviet-led invasion in 1968. I started visiting my homeland after the Velvet Revolution in 1989 and saw many opera productions ever since. The State Opera ones were often shabby and labelling some as second class would be merciful. And then the building saw its major reconstruction and re-opening in 2020 and as if the music life was reconstructed, too. All the operas I saw were, as is the trend, ambitious, some to be appreciated by just that, some not even helped by it, some great. But to see Le Grand Macabre in Prague in 2024, a mad opera about a mad end to a mad world, as its Czech translator and dramaturgist Ondřej Hučín puts it, goes beyond my maddest dreams. It is certainly worth a trip, and if some may find the production too mad, they will get a certain chance to be mad about the beauty of Prague.
New York City only has 1 also. Gone are NY City Opera and OONY (Opera Orch of NY)
Fortunately many symphony orchestras are now starting to do operas.
I lived in Prague 2014-17 and went to the opera quite a lot – interesting repertory, much of which you won’t hear elsewhere – though the quality was variable. It was almost more like a public utility, which has its virtues. I’m going to Prague this fall specifically to hear opera, and in the week we’re there we will hear: Rosenkavalier, Lady McBeth of Mtsensk, Le Grand Macabre, Carmen, The Devil and Kate, and Rusalka. There’s also an Otello that we’ll just miss. In what other city in the world can you hear all that in one week?
Opera in Prague is not expansive. Younger crowds are nurtured.
Performances catter for local crowds and local tastes – including many works written by Czech composers sang in Czech, that can hardly be seen outside the Czech Republic. Each year 30 -40 productions appear on 3 different stages, often simultaniously.
Watching the Bartered Bride in the National Theater, with complete families including todlers in the crowd gave me much joy. Hearing the crowd burst in loughter at the right momrnts made things very clear: It is part of their culture, and that’s why it is still relevant…
“In what other city in the world can you hear all that in one week?” Berlin, probably!
Uh … Wien? This week: “Salome”, “Nabucco”, “Cosí fan tutte”, “Falstaff”, “Richard III” (a Purcell pastiche), “The Gospel According to the Other Mary” (fully staged), “Die Zauberflöte”, Offenbach’s “Le voyage dans la lune”, and some children’s operas. If you don’t like singing, there’s Rudolf Nureyev’s version of “Swan Lake”. Raimund-Theater and the Ronacher are playing “Phantom of the Opera” (are there still people who haven’t seen it?) and a tribute to Austro-Popstar Falco, “Rock Me Amadeus”.
Berlin
Prague is not unique in this respect but London is. It is a damning indictment of all the philistines in government and in the ACE that artistic achievements count for nothing in the total sum of things. As Napoleon once commented, “England is a nation of shopkeepers”. Shame on all those who care so little for our cultural heritage.
I see little evidence that the teaching establishment, arguably in the best position to create a demand for opera in the first place, is concerned about this aspect of our cultutal heritage.
Silence.
And most of it is imported. That’s not a criticism, just a fact. Ignoring Shakespeare is harder to justify.
Napoleon’s comment is irrelevant.
Ah, Napoleon…so brilliantly successful against the British. Thank goodness for fascist dictators: preserving serious European cultural values since 1799.
Ligeti’s ‘anti-opera’ is neither an opera nor an anti-opera, it is merely one of those monstruosities where the sixties of the last century specialized in, to rub-in how awful everything is, dressed-up as entertainment, so you had to buy a ticket for it.
Soon after Ligeti finished it, after long and hard work, he fell seriously ill, and never quite recovered.
The USA is even worse. We all remember when the San Antonio Symphony recently went bankrupt and ceased to exist. This is a regular occurrence due to the USA’s neofeudalistic system of funding the arts by donations from the wealthy. San Diego, Miami, Kansas City, Albuquerque, Louisville, Syracuse, Tulsa, New Orleans, Denver, San Jose, Colorado Springs, New York City Opera, Honolulu, Miami, and Philadelphia are other orchestras that have declared bankruptcy during my career. If and when they manage to return they are depleted and their musicians often demoralized. Many more orchestras are in continual financial trouble even if they skirt bankruptcy. Miami has a metro population of 5.5 million, and is incredibly wealthy, but does not even have a symphony orchestra. That’s what the USA is, and Americans live in brainwashed denial about it.
These events are a reflection of a kind of artistic and social fraud that lies at the heart of the American arts world. A fraud in which the entire American arts community participates, from the journals, to the bloggers, to the music schools, to the opera companies, to the classical music media.
+ Before it last went bankrupt, the San Diego Opera was listed as one of America’s top 10 companies, but the city of San Diego ranks 296th in the world for opera performances per year.
+ We see Houston calling itself a “Grand Opera” when its orchestra only has about 50 members (about half the size of a normal opera orchestra,) when it does not even rank among the top 100 cities for performances per year, and has so few performances it can’t even have a dedicated opera house.
+ We see Washington calling itself our “National Opera” even though it ranks 182nd in the world for performances per year. It’s entire season has about the same number of performances major European houses often do in 2 or 3 weeks.
+ We see that the Met’s budget of 320 million is two and a half times higher than the Vienna State Opera’s, even though Vienna is one of the most active opera houses in the world and has a season four months longer. The Met’s budget is 185 million dollars more than the Vienna State Opera’s, enough money to run two additional major opera houses in other cities. We see how the wealthy treat themselves to the most expensive stars and stagings while letting the rest of the country go to hell. Just like they did with the San Antonio Symphony.
+ We see the lavish productions and expensive stars in San Francisco and Chicago even though they are not among the top 50 cities for performances per year. In some years, they’ve barely been even in the top 100.
+ We see that San Francisco consciously plans its season just long enough for the musicians to be able to collect unemployment benefits after the season ends. In no other country, are unemployment benefits consciously used as a method of arts funding. (The NYC Ballet uses the same tactic for its orchestra.)
+ We see that Los Angeles has the 3rd largest metro GDP in the world while it ranks 180th for opera performances per year, and yet has more theatrical and musical talent than almost any other city in the world.
+ We see Boston claiming to be such a cultured city when it ranks 252nd in the world for opera performances per year.
None of this will change until the USA develops a public arts funding system like every other developed country in the world. And yet our political system is so narrow, rigid, and in the hands of the wealthy that we can’t even elect a person as bland and rational as Bernie Sanders.
Boston has never really been an opera town though. That problem has existed for many many decades.
A city without opera cannot easily claim to be a city devoted to the fine arts.
Miami’s Cuban culture does not lend itself to supporting the White Anglo European music and opera.
A lot of European opera houses use “resident designers” to save money and they have turned out excellent work. San Francisco tried it in the 1990’s with Thierry Bosquet who created gorgeous stagings of Rosenkavalier and Tosca.
“Opera has been present in Cuba since the latest part of the 18th century, when the first full-fledged theater, called Coliseo, was built. Since then to present times, the Cuban people have highly enjoyed opera, and many Cuban composers have cultivated the operatic genre, sometimes with great success at an international level.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_in_Cuba
When it comes to the arts, the Cubans love just about every genre and they bring enormous talent to them.
Having the chance to hear “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”, “Lear” and “Le Grand Macabre” in the same season it’s certainly attractive to me. I thought opera seasons in Prague were more conservative.