The Cunning Little Vixen, Opera North at the Grand in Leeds

 

The Cunning Little Vixen, Leos Janacek

A thoroughly enjoyable evening - brilliant music, athletic and acrobatic dancing and wonderful singing.  Fabulous stage set, great costumes. Comedy and pathos, what more could you want?

A folk/fairy tale, ‘totally bonkers’, the Night Garden with a darker side but a delicate touch. It’s a wow from me. 

Ulysses' Homecoming at Buxton

Ulysses' Homecoming, by Monteverdi, performed by English Touring Opera in the splendid Buxton opera House, Derbyshire, on Friday 18 November 2016.  A different experience from later operas, but very enjoyable.

We combined this with a meal at the Lone Star Grill.  The following day a walk over the Roaches, and a meal in the local Thai restaurant made for an excellent weekend.

Billy Budd - Opera North

21 October 2016 at Leeds Grand Theatre.

A great performance by an all-male cast. Striking scenery, stirring music, superb singing. It's a grim tale told as a flashback by a captain with a moral dilemma.  The three main characters, Captain Vere (Alan Oke), Claggart (Alastair Miles) and Billy Budd (Roderick Williams) were excellent, along with the supporting cast and the orchestra. 

I loved the piccolo playing during one of Billy's long arias. 

I thought the performance was magnificent.

The Barber of Seville at Leeds

A nightmare journey with long delays, but we arrived with time to settle in to the hotel, then make our way into the Grand Arcade for a vegeburger at Roots and Shoots, where most other diners seemed to be heading for the opera too.

The show was magnificent, well-staged, acted and sung with verve and thoroughly entertaining - a pantomime with Rossini's music. The female lead, Rosina was played by a replacement, but you'd never have known. 

And on top of everything the hotel room was quiet and comfortable. 

Next morning we paid a brief visit to Dan and family, and then headed south along a rather quieter A1 than yesterday.

Tosca - from NY Met - on TV

Miserable and compelling.  This production was controversial, indeed booed on the opening night, partly because it was such a contrast to the lavish Zeffirelli production of Tosca, which had been performed at the Met for some time. The scenery was much less elaborate.  Bondy's production also shocked by exposing a breast on the Madonna, and introducing three prostitutes into the scene in Act Two where the evil and lecherous Secret Police Chief, Scappia, is planning how to seduce Tosca and kill off her lover the painter, Cavaradossi.

As usual I was like the open-eyed kid watching, loving every minute of the story, and found the settings superb.

Albert Herring on TV

Performed in Rouen. 2009.

Based on a Conte by Guy de Maupassant - 'Le Rosier de Madame Husson'.
Very funny, but of course with serious undertones. Much lighter than Peter Grimes.

Il Viaggio a Reims - Rossini (on TV)

A recording of the production at the Chatelet in Paris,  a combined effort of the Kirov Opera and Théâtre du Châtelet

Had me googling to remind myself of the history I "studied" years ago.  This one-act opera was written to celebrate the coronation of Charles X of France in 1824.  The monarchy was briefly restored after the Revolutionary years, and Napoleon.

Some very entertaining singing and acting - particularly the Contessa de Folleville (great name) in her extravagant costumes.  No wonder we could hardly follow the plot, though - there isn't much of one - a crowd of European aristos trying to get to Reims for the coronation, and the problems they have.

(I may add more later.)

Die Fledermaus on TV

This was the 1990 performance at Covent Garden, on New Years Eve, where Joan Sutherland made her last public appearance in the party scene - in fact she, Pavarotti and Marilyn Horne almost hi-jacked the opera. ;-)

Alas no subtitles.  They would have helped, even though the singing was in English.  An odd one - with a lot of talking , which did help to understand the story - which basically involves a lot of flirting and deception and confusion of identities all round.

La Traviata in Northampton

Excellent evening in Derngate Theatre.  La Traviata performed by the Ukrainian National Opera of Kharkiv.

The evening went by at high speed and was thoroughly entertaining.

Peter Grimes - Britten

NY Met Opera from 2008, televised.

Brilliant scenery, totally in tune with the dark story-line and the powerful music.  Based on the Net-drying sheds at Hastings .

Review in New York Times

More on Peter Grimes as a character from the Independent 2004

Opera on TV - Tales of Hoffmann

More details later - great visuals in the production we saw.

Hansel and Gretel

This was a recording from the New York Met seen on TV.  We started watching towards the end of scene 1, just before Mother arrives home to scold the children, and watched through to the end.


An absorbing and very dark fairytale, with, of course, a happy ending.  Great scenery and stage effects - quite Alice in Wonderland in places, especially the fantasy banquet scene with the chefs and the butler-fish.  I wasn't sure whether they were evil or good.


Odd to hear opera in English - good to have subtitles even so! 


Here's a link to  a 2007 review of the production http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/26/arts/music/26gret.html

Don Giovanni - film from Glyndebourne

I hadn't realised how much humour this opera contains. Brilliant show, apart from one thing - it's a shame they had to break the atmosphere up with interviews at the beginning of the second half of the film - we went back, all ready and eager to be plunged into the story again - and lo! analysis and explanation . . . I thought these guys were supposed to know about dramatic tension.

La Traviata on TV from Royal Opera House

Carmen in Leeds

I should have written about this in February when we saw it!  A very enjoyable experience, although some of the reviews I read afterwards were less than overwhelming!  It was set in Seville, Ohio - though that didn't matter, and did explain the soldiers' costumes.  Sung in French, of course...but still felt pretty Hispanic to me.