Past Production Reviews
28Floria Tosca is an opera singer, a diva, but in Victorien Sardou’s play – and in Puccini’s opera – we mainly see her as a woman in love, tormented by jealousy, whose life is shattered by a powerful, unprincipled man who does not hesitate to sentence her lover to death and blackmail her into submitting to his desires in her desperate attempt to save him. Director Robert Carsen, in his 1990 production, focuses almost entirely on “the diva”. The setting is in a theatre: in the first act Cavaradossi is painting the scenery, and the Te Deum is sung by the audience in the orchestra stalls. The second act is backstage, while Tosca sings on a stage the other side of the backdrop, and the third act takes place on stage, as seen from the back.
Lighting (courtesy of Davy Cunningham) greatly enhances this particular production. Shafts of light come in from all angles, protagonists hide in the shadows, whilst there is a row of very bright stage lights at the end, after Tosca leaps to her death – not into the River Tiber (which, in reality, one probably cannot quite reach from the top of the Castel Sant’ Angelo) but into the pretend orchestra pit at the back of the real stage.
An allererster Stelle sei hier das Debut von Hanna-Elisabeth Müller als Arabella genannt. Was für eine wunderschöne facettenreiche Stimme. Auch schauspielerisch gestaltete sie ihre Partie sehr überzeugend. Gewiss wird Arabella eine ihrer Glanzpartien werden. Ein Genuss! Zum ersten Mal an diesem Hause hörte man in der Rolle der Zdenka die Sopranistin Anett Fritsch. Sie gestaltete diese Partie mit höhensicherer Stimme und viel Energie. Die fast unsingbare Rolle der Fiakermilli war mit der temperamentvollen Aleksandra Kubas-Kruk gut besetzt. Sie meisterte die Koloraturen souverän. Die Partie der besorgten Mutter Adelaide war bei Judith Schmid bestens aufgehoben. Die Kartenauflegerin gestaltete Irène Friedli.
In Gideon Davey's unified set - the lobby of a four-story Viennese hotel with balustrades - the colors red and black of the Reich, predominate. An art deco chandelier dangles from the stage tower, completing the evocation of the zeitgeist. Arabella's three suitors are dressed in the uniform of the SS. It makes perfect sense, then, to see in the closing bars a Nazi mob violently question the happy-ending of Strauss's opera, by pointing guns to Mandryka, the Croatian outsider and love rival of the officers. The zeitgeist will break into the play by three other occasions. Two banners with swastikas can be seen along either side of the stage during the ball of the second act. The Fiakermilli, mouthpiece of the vox populi, dressed in a folkish dirndl plays a pantomime with young peasants. Aleksandra Kubas-Kruk adds her yodeling coloratura effectively. The scenic highlight is reserved for the interlude that normally comments on Zdenka and Matteo's love night but is here enlivened by Philippe Giraudeau's choreography as a street fight between brown shirts and young peasants wearing lederhosen.
The other Harewood Artists were ... and Andri Björn Róbertsson singing Theseus. All clearly have great careers ahead and gave wholehearted performances.
Andri Björn Róbertsson, Emma Carrington, Simon Butteriss, Timothy Robinson and Jonathan Lemalu who may have smaller roles, but add much character and wonderful singing and acting in the final scenes.
'The Valkyries were superb.'
“The entire cast was cheered by the public, but Stuart Skelton in the role of Siegmund was the most acclaimed. Along with him, were René Pape (Hunding), Tomasz Konieczny (the god Wotan), Adrianne Pieczonka (Sieglinde), Ricarda Merbeth (Brünnilde), Daniela Sindram (Fricka), Julie Davies (Gerhilde), Samantha Crawford (Ortlinde) and Sandra Ferrández (Waltraute).”
Das Schlussbild von Robert Carsens gegenwartsnaher Deutung von Puccinis Manon Lescaut (Neuproduktion 2005) ist wohl deren stärkstes: Der Kanadier lässt die Shoppingqueen Manon nicht in der Wüste, sondern unter den gleichgültigen Blicken von Schaufensterpuppen in einer Luxuseinkaufspassage sterben, quasi vor verschlossener Tür im Goldenen Quartier.
Nous voici dans l’univers des nouveaux riches du XXIe siècle. Le décor unique se métamorphose tour à tour en galerie de luxe où les vitrines de robes griffées côtoient les SDF, en penthouse dont les fenêtres s’ouvrent sur la vue à couper le souffle d’une skyline dantesque (on pense à la Perle de l’Orient à Shanghai), en ruelle lugubre où la pègre (avec Géronte à sa tête) prostitue des jeunes filles, pour échouer au dernier acte en galerie commerciale de béton et de verre, toujours aussi froide et jonchée des résidus de notre société du paraître et de la consommation de masse.
In London, Fleming’s colleagues were less consistently good than Fleming herself. Reiffenstuel’s dresses for Alice Coote’s Octavian and Mariandel were not the most becoming the mezzo-soprano has worn on this stage, where she has thus far specialized in male characters. Coote’s singing was often ungainly, frequently with a discomfiting rawness to the tone. The finest exponent of the three main women’s parts was Sophie Bevan, who sang the ingenue role of her namesake to perfection, with a top register to die for.Steinberg’s family-sized sets looked too big on the Covent Garden stage; the Princess’s bedroom and its mammoth collection of dynastic paintings dwarfed the characters. A troublesome feature of Act II was a collection of enormous field guns and an obsession with rifles: in his desire to underline the militarism of his redesignated period, Carsen decided, without any specifics in Hofmannsthal’s text to back it up, that the army supplies that provide the basis of Faninal’s fortune were, in fact, armaments. Act III swapped the original’s dubious suburban inn for a palatial, populous brothel, where Ochs’s assignation with Mariandel almost got lost in the wider sweep of hedonistic goings-on. Overall, Carsen’s direction lacked the detail and focus that can make Der Rosenkavalier profoundly moving. Supplying some, at least, of the missing magic was the conducting of Andris Nelsons, whose enthusiasm for Strauss has already resulted in persuasive Covent Garden performances of Salome and Elektra. Once again his ability to balance super-enriched textures and provide dramatic momentum in a score that needs to be kept on the move paid rich dividends. The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House responded keenly to his confident direction.
On the podium of the Orchestra of the Teatro Regio , Marco Angius prefers a dynamic, vibrant direction, with a strong emotional and vital impact, clearly contrasting the elegiac parts and the more lively ones (the storm of the third act). To underline a preference for often full-bodied and voluminous sounds, sometimes overwhelming compared to the stage. The Slovak soprano Andrea Danková is Katěrina Kabanová, known as Katia: very musical and elegant, with a non-protruding voice, metallic in the high and at times weak in the low register, with attention to accents and singing line. The interpretation is excellent and heartfelt, where the loneliness of a woman eager for love emerges and who, with difficulty, manages to repress her erotic impulses. Baldanzoso is Boris Grigorjevič by the Ukrainian tenor Misha Didyk : shrill and vigorous vocality, characterized by almost always sure and thundering high notes, outlines a passionate and at the same time caring lover. On the shields the rehearsal of the English mezzo Rebecca de Pont Davies, in the role of the algid and authoritarian Marfa Ignatěvna Kabanova, known as Kabanicha, custodian of an asphyxiating matriarchal tradition: the voice is luminous, firm and penetrating in the high notes, in some cases opaque in the low ones; the acting is magnetic and charismatic. Characteristically centered is the weak Tichon Ivanyč Kabanov by the Slovak tenor Štefan Margita , with a brilliant and controlled voice, lively and well projected, able to bend to suggestive mezzevoci. The Ukrainian mezzo-soprano Lena Belkina as Varvara is credible : using a clear tonal voice, homogeneous and round in the emission, and a rightly flirtatious interpretation, she gives the character the freshness and imprudence of youth. The tenor Enrico Casari (Váňa Kudrjáš) and the German bass-baritone Oliver Zwarg (Savjol Prokofjevič Dikoj) performed more than good : decisive in the accents and handsome the first, remarkable in the phrasing and ugly in the scenic hatching the second. The interventions of the Chorus of the Teatro Regio , led by Claudio Fenoglio, were centered . At the end, a warm success and strong applause for all the performers
«Le baryton australien Derek Welton offre ses superbes graves à Oreste».
‘Orest … was sung by the Australian bass-baritone Derek Welton, whose attractive dark timbre fulfilled this heroic and lyrical music … Welton sang with extreme beauty and style, creating a noble character.’
