After Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier, the composer Richard Strauss and the librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal were opera’s foremost duo in the first decades of the 20th century. They chose to follow up the two successes with a challenging experiment: an opera about an opera and a story about artistic creation. Ariadne auf Naxos is metafiction in its most enjoyable form, an opera that makes the audience aware of its own role in an entertaining way. It is a comic opera where spoken theatre is mixed with song. Strauss’ shimmeringly melodious and extravagantly orchestrated music is here performed under the baton of the Royal Swedish Opera Music Director Alan Gilbert and with Christina Nilsson, Johanna Rudström, Sofie Asplund, Michael Weinius and the actor Andreas T. Olsson in the leading roles.
The Plot: The composer is stressed. His little opera ensemble is about to perform Ariadne auf Naxos, a grandiose opera of his own making, at the home of a wealthy man. But the very same evening a troupe of players led by the colourful Zerbinetta will also perform, and the two ensembles fight over who is to go first. The threat of cuts is driving the earnest composer to near breakdown. This is the comic prologue to the opera about Ariadne that the audience will be attending after the intermission. And here is the plot of The Opera:
The king’s daughter, Ariadne, lies in front of a cave on a desert island in deepest despair. She has been abandoned by her lover, the hero Theseus. Three nymphs – Naiad, Dryad and Echo – have lulled the unfortunate woman to rest briefly with their song. It seems to Ariadne that death is the only way to escape her grief.
At this moment the commedia dell’arte company appears and try to comfort the princess in her distress.
Zerbinetta talks to Ariadne about her outlook on life, love especially, but there is no response. The players compete for Zerbinetta’s attention, and Harlequin wins. The nymphs rush in to announce the arrival of the god Bacchus. He has just escaped the tricks of the sorceress Circe and is now steering his ship towards Naxos.
As if in a trance, Ariadne goes to meet him, certain that he is Hermes, the gods’ messenger, who will guide her to the realm of death. She collapses ecstatically into his arms, but instead of death, she encounters life and love.
Can the darkest moments of life also lift our souls? Drawing on his own experience in a Siberian prison in the company of misfits, murderers and thieves, Dostoevsky was inspired to write his novel Notes from a Dead House, telling his brother at the time: ‘Believe me, there were among them deep, strong, beautiful natures, and it often gave me great joy to find gold under a rough exterior.’
In Janáček’s hands, Dostoevsky’s inspiration and the raw material drawn from an appalling world of incarceration find an even more powerful form of expression in his last opera, From the House of the Dead which is streamed on Slippedisc courtesy of OperaVision. Unfettered by conventional story-telling, Janáček wrote his own libretto, freely weaving together a series of stories of everyday prison life and of the fates of individual convicts. The cast is exclusively male and made up of a collective, rather than of interacting soloists; a chorus opera from which individual speakers step out to tell their tales. The longest monologue of all, Šiškov’s, told in the quietness of the prison hospital at night, is emblematic of the whole opera: a harrowing tale constructed around a transcendentally gentle theme, just as Janáček’s own compassion threads through and transforms his grimmest and yet most uplifting opera. Despite an oppressive finale, Janáček wrote at the beginning of the score, ‘In every creature a spark of God!’ And this is this spark that inspired the National Theatre in the composer’s home city of Brno, to connect Janáček’s last opera with an equally distinctive work, his Glagolitic Mass. Janáček said of his Mass : ‘I wanted to capture here faith in the security of the nation not on a religious basis, but on a moral, strong one, which takes God as a witness.’ This live stream from the heart of Janáček country – offering a staged version of the Glagolitic Mass as a continuation of From the House of the Dead in a new critical edition by Professor John Tyrrell – should bear new testimony to the power of faith in man and to the genius of their local composer.
The opera is conducted by Jakub Hrůša and directed by Jiří Heřman.
Available from 6 November 1900 CET/ 1800 London/ 1300 New York
Opera North’s adventurous new production of an ancient tragedy is told through a meeting of the worlds of Indian and western baroque classical music. Streamed on Slippedisc courtesy of OperaVision. The bowed strings of the violin and the tar shehnai, the hammered strings of the santoor, the plucked strings of the harpsichord and sitar, and the rhythms of the tabla shape a unique musical encounter. Laurence Cummings, who also conducted Garsington’s Orfeo, is here joined by Jasdeep Singh Degun as co-music director to weave together their respective traditions of Indian classical and western early music. An onstage orchestra of 19 players includes a baroque ensemble of violin, viola, cello, bass, trumpet, percussion, harp, harpsichord, lirone and theorbo, as well as Indian classical instruments including sitar, tabla, santoor, esraj and bansuri. The cast includes performers trained in western and Indian classical traditions, with tenor Nicholas Watts singing Orpheus and British-Tamil Carnatic singer Ashnaa Sasikaran singing Eurydice. Sung in Italian, Urdu, Malayalam, Bengali, Panjabi, Hindi, Tamil.
In this meeting of East and West, OperaVision closes a month dedicated to opera’s ongoing fascination with the myth of Orpheus.
The Plot: The wedding of the year is here as Orpheus, the musician of mythical power, marries graceful Eurydice. When the newlyweds’ joy is shattered by the sudden death of Eurydice, our heartbroken hero sets off on a mission to the underworld to rescue his bride, certain that his love will overcome adversity. Can Orpheus conquer fate, or will his heart be broken for a second time?
Jasdeep Singh Degun discusses how he approached the challenge of combining Eastern and Western music:
Available from 31 October 2022 from 1900 CET/ 1800 London/ 1300 New York
Slippedisc, courtesy of OperaVision, are focussing on Orpheus operas in the coming weeks, starting with one of the most successful.
Orfeo ed Euridice, premiered in 1762, is a turning point in the history of opera. Freeing the plot from the conventions of the 18th century opera seria, Christoph Willibald Gluck introduces fluidity to the drama. The rigid alternation of aria and recitativo is abandoned; continuity and unity are the cornerstones of Gluck’s reform. The movement of Gluck’s music – with its lyrical intensity and the interweaving of chorus, solo singing and dance – appeals to choreographers.
New National Theatre Tokyo has entrusted their new production to Japanese choreographer and dancer Saburo Teshigawara, known for the beauty and coherence of his productions. Here, he oversees the staging, set, costumes and lighting, with Masato Suzuki conducting the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. In a month that OperaVision dedicates to the Orpheus myth, this stop in Japan is a key marker of the universal power of music. With his most famous aria Che farò senza Euridice enchanting generations, Gluck sets opera on a new path that would ultimately lead to Berlioz and Wagner. Orfeo is sung by counter-tenor Lawrence Zazzo, Euridice by Valda Wilson, Amore by Rie Miyake. the opera is sung in Italian with subtitles in English, Italian, Japanese, French and German.
The Plot: Orfeo is so consumed with grief at the death of his beloved Euridice that the gods allow him to lead her back from the underworld – if he will not look at her on the way. But who can resist looking at a loved one?
Available on 7th October 2022 from 1900 CET/ London 1800/ New York 1300.
In order to capture the demonic element in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Giuseppe Verdi stuck close to the text and experimented with new timbres. In a remarkable stage design by Henrik Ahr, which resembles a huge cauldron, Michael Thalheimer focuses his production on Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and the witches. Verdi specialist Antonino Fogliani conducts a stellar production, in which the opulent choruses repeatedly provide musical highlights. Macbeth is sung by Hrólfur Sæmundsson, Lady Macbeth by Ewa Płonka, Banco by Bogdan Talos, Macduff by Eduardo Aladrén and Malcolm by David Fischer. The opera is streamed by Slippedisc, courtesy of OperaVision.
The Plot: After a victorious battle, the witches predict a crown for the Scottish commander Macbeth. In response to the witches’ prophecies, Macbeth’s thirst for power is fuelled dangerously by his wife and they decide to murder their king Duncan in his sleep. With this act of blood, they unleash an unprecedented spiral of violence that will lead them straight into the abyss.
Available from Friday 30th September at 1900 CET/ 1800 London/ 1300 New York
Slippedisc, courtesy of OperaVision streams Birmingham Opera Company’s production of Wagner’s RhineGold in a new English translation by Jeremy Sams. This RhineGold can be seen as a step closer to Wagner’s vision of a total work of art acting as a lever of change in society. Birmingham Opera Company is known for staging opera in empty warehouses and disused factories, but here performs RhineGold in the relatively conventional surroundings of Birmingham Symphony Hall. The production is from August 2021 with the pandemic still dictating so much of our lives. This did not stop the company gathering an orchestra of 87 players from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and a stellar international cast performing alongside local volunteers. Conspicuous in his absence is the company’s founding director, Graham Vick, who passed away just as rehearsals were beginning. True to Vick’s spirit, his long-term collaborator Richard Willacy brings an operatic masterpiece close to the community that the company serves, with no fear of social commentary. This is an urban RhineGold; Rhinemaidens are selfie-taking party girls, Alberich is cycle courier, and Wotan is first seen giving a press conference for FNN: Fake News Network.
The Plot: Hidden in plain sight, three guardians collude to protect the gold for those in power. An outsider, Alberich stumbles upon them and an opportunity to make his life matter, but at a cost. Meanwhile, Leader Wotan desperate to hang on to the Gods’ fading glory, struggles to balance power, his own laws and the standards of public life. But his Chief Advisor, Loge, always has a plan. Mother Nature warns that greed for power will bring its own destruction. No-one listens. Whose lives matter? Who pays the price?
AVAILABLE FROM 9 September 2022 at 1900 CET / 1800 London / 1300 New York Director Richard Willacy on the making of RhineGold
In the isolating year leading up to RhineGold, Graham Vick and I spoke many times about ‘castles in the sky’ – the illusions composed by leaders in whom we are expected to place our trust. Yet, he chose Wagner’s RhineGold for many reasons, not just as a Zeitgeisty political story. As always, for Graham, it was personal; it provided an opportunity for the artists who he has mentored to shine, a clear gesture of the company’s growth over 30 years and a significant work for Alpesh Chauhan’s first production as Music Director. But as often happens, life and death trump intention. In the end the journey for all towards RhineGold was intensely personal. Sadly, Graham fell ill just before we started rehearsals in mid-June, attending only a couple of sessions on Zoom in the first days as we sang through some sections in a rehearsal room. This was to be our last contact.
In Birmingham, we choose an opera, find a venue, assemble the company from scratch and work together to create a production. Taking it day by day, we begin the process of exploring the material, working on the content, testing it, talking it through with volunteers from all walks of life and artists from all over the world. Everything is developed in real time. No sets or costumes built in advance. We work in and of the now. Our usual type of space is a disused factory, abandoned nightclub, ice rink, aircraft hangar. In June 2021 we still had options for a Big Top version but, with COVID still very much present and without Graham, by mid-July, I had decided to bring the work to Birmingham’s amazing Symphony Hall which itself is set in the same building as the International Conference Centre; somehow a suitable home to Leader Wotan to launch his ‘Your Lives Matter’ campaign.
And then the worst happened. Graham passed away on 17 July 2021. The company’s response was overwhelming. We sat down together, talked about our feelings and decided together to go for it. Over a few devastating, fractured weeks, the company – many of whom have their own personal relationship with Graham – discovered what really binds us: we shared our experience, humanity and purpose.
And here you have the result. It is not a Graham Vick production. I’m pretty sure he would have gone a different way on many characters and, as is usual in Birmingham, the design was conjured on the hoof. But it is testament to Graham’s conviction to trust the material, to create a space in which universal truths can manifest in images from the now, to base all choices on repertoire, singers, images and language to represent and speak to a diverse 21st century audience. If we allow these great works to breathe in the air of the present, they will speak of who we really are, now; they live in us, the flawed humankind they portray. And what a portrayal; Wagner’s genius RhineGold 150 years on from its first manifestation, delivers such hardwired rollercoasting dramatic, stirring, emotional depth, joyful irony and humour.
With a great story, great performers, an open door to explore the work with the public as part of the process, a barnstorming orchestra, 3 bins, 28 washing up bowls, a table, two chairs, a lectern and a pop-up in a BOC’d space, the DNA of the company shines through. Even in a concert hall, it is still perhaps – as our tag line states – ‘Not what you expect from Opera’.
Slippedisc, courtesy of OperaVision, will be bringing a wide ranging selection of operas for the coming weekends in September. Make a note of them in your diaries.
Wagner’s Rhinegold with Birmingham Opera Company, Tchaikovsky’s Pikovaya Dama (Queen of Spades) at La Monnaie , Verdi’s Macbeth with Deutsche Oper am Rhein and an Evening of Operetta and Zarzuela from the young artists from Palau des les Arts, Valencia.
Slippedisc courtesy of OperaVision presents Thomas Hampson and Lawrence Brownlee giving a masterclass to six singers from across the globe within the framework of Opera for Peace. This organisation aims to promote cultural understanding across continents, and works to develop the next generation of opera professionals to become ambassadors of sound values, acting as a positive influence on society and future generations. This film features six singers gathered in Rome by Opera for Peace to learn from each other and from singers with established careers.
Thomas Hampson, one of the world’s leading baritones, has received many honours and awards for his artistry and cultural leadership. He enjoys a singular international career, recording more than 150 albums in a discography that includes a Grammy, five Edison Awards, and the Grand Prix du Disque. Through the Hampsong Foundation which he founded in 2003 he employs the art of song to promote intercultural dialogue and understanding. Lawrence Brownlee is a leading figure in opera, both as a tenor on the world’s top stages, and as a voice for activism and diversity in the industry.
The artists are: Yolisa Ngwexana -soprano from South Africa; Shuai Zhang – bass from China; Violeta Samon – soprano from Ukraine; Aleksey Kursanov – tenor from Russia; Leonardo Sánchez – tenor from Mexico; Ketevan Chuntishvili – soprano from Georgia.
Available on 26 August 2022 at 1900 CET/ 1800 London/ 1300 NY
Slippedisc courtesy of OperaVision streams live from the Longborough Festival Opera, known as the British Bayreuth. This is the bucolic backdrop for this new production by Amy Lane which celebrates the natural world. Renowned Wagnerian Anthony Negus conducts a cast of the UK’s leading Wagnerian singers.
Siegfried is the third opera in Richard Wagner’s four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. Wagner broke off composition at the end of Act II of Siegfried to write Tristan und Isolde and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, returning to Siegfried seven years later. Elements of these two operas feed into Siegfried. Like Tristan, it has an ecstatic love duet, as Brünnhilde and Siegfried discover each other. There is also comedy, a quality not typically associated with Wagner. The opera’s lighter moments take many forms, from physical comedy (Mime’s reaction to Siegfried’s superhuman anvil-hammering), character flaws (Mime’s joy at riddle-solving, which almost tips into self-sabotage), and the hero’s revelation of Brünnhilde at the end of the opera (‘That is no man!’) which raises a laugh from audiences in some parts of the world. Listen out for Wagner’s wonderful evocation of the forest in Act II.
Radley Daley sings Siegfried, Adrian Dwyer as Mime, Paul Carey Jones as The Wanderer and Mark Stone as Alberich.
The Plot: The hero Siegfried reforges his father’s shattered sword, embarking on a quest for the greatest prize of all – the love of the valkyrie Brünnhilde, who lies trapped in a ring of fire.
Available on 19 August 2022 from 1900 CET/ 1800 London, 1300 NY
Slippedisc, courtesy of OperaVision brings a live stream of Il viaggio a Reims. This was Rossini’s last Italian opera and the first he wrote in France for its Paris premiere in 1825 as part of the festivities for the coronation of Charles X. Conceived for the greatest voices of the time, the opera requires an exceptional cast: three prima donna sopranos, an alto, two tenors, and four baritones and basses have leading roles. For Rossini Opera Festival’s Accademia in Pesaro, Il viaggio a Reims has become an annual summer showcase for the next generation of bel canto singers. Founded by the conductor Alberto Zedda, the Accademia Rossiniana has an international reputation for training young Rossini voices. One former student, Juan Diego Flórez, is not only one of the world’s leading tenors but the new artistic director of the Rossini Opera Festival itself. Emilio Sagi’s production provides a beautiful platform on which young artists can shine. The opera is conducted by Daniel Carter. Performers include Mariia Smirnova as Crinna, Paola Leguizamón as Marchesa Melibea, Aitana Sanz as Contessa di Folleville and Maria Kokareva as Madama Cortese.
The Plot: at the Inn of the Golden Lily, the most illustrious figures in Europe converge to celebrate a royal French coronation. But between lost luggage, missing horses, and some amorous antics, nothing will happen as planned.
Performance – Saturday 13th August 2022 and note that it is a morning peformance: 11.00 CET / 10.00 London/ 5.00 New York
Slippedisc, courtesy of OperaVision presents tonight Ernani, Verdi’s early drama of sweeping melodies and rousing rhythms with an all-star cast.
In 1844, 14 years after Victor Hugo presented Hernani, Giuseppe Verdi adapted the play into an opera for La Fenice, Venice. Ernani was an immediate success, marking Verdi’s prowess at adapting an historical event (the crowning of Charles V as emperor at Aachen Cathedral) to a psychologically convincing musical drama. The backdrop of three men paying court to one woman was the perfect foil for Verdi to explore the expressive qualities of three types of male voice. The tenor, a youthful suffering lover – Ernani. The bass, an elderly ruthless egotist – de Silva. The baritone, a more complex figure torn between tenderness and violence, self-indulgence and idealism – Don Carlo. As luxuriant as the sumptuous costumes of director and set and costume designer Hugo de Anna’s period production, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma’s cast stars Angela Meade as Elvira, Francesco Meli as Ernani, Evgeny Stavinsky as Don Ruy Gomez De Silva and Ludovic Tézier as Don Carlohttps://youtu.be/Ol18PZTs_QQ. The Teatro dell’Opera di Roma Orchestra is conducted by Marco Armiliato.
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The Plot: Ernani is a love story about a young woman, Elvira, caught between three men: her lover, the nobleman-turned-outlaw Ernani; her guardian, the rich, elderly de Silva, who wants her for himself; and Don Carlo, the King of Spain who also has his eye on Elvira. Given the number of protagonists, it is also the story of a tragedy.
Available from Friday 29 July 2022 1900 CET/ 1800 London/ 1300 NY
Music for The Eyes – Garsington Opera
Click here to watch During lockdown, the innovative Garsington Opera made this series of performance/documentaries, examining operas through their other artisic connections. In this first episode, Music for the Eyes takes Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro as its focus, looking at the rise of the middle class, gardens and ambiguity in many works of 18th Century art.
These programmes look at opera side by side with visual art and literature to draw new connections between masterpieces. The series is presented by Garsington’s Johnny Langridge and art historian Dr Imogen Tedbury.
You can watch the Garsington production of Le Nozze di Figaro that provides the trigger for this documentary in full on Garsington’s YouTube channel.
