Past Production Reviews
9Ninguna versión de concierto con tenor y barítono detrás de un atril y en medio de una orquesta puede satisfacer del todo el significado de este momento. Aquí se necesita una escena como la propuesta por Kramer: semi vacía, cubierta de nieve con una tumba abierta y un coro tímidamente intrusivo a los costados, y dos hombres mirándose primero con asombro y angustia, después con tierna admiración y finalmente tomados de la mano. Hasta este momento, el barítono y el tenor se habían movido no solo como enemigos el uno de otro, sino con una perplejidad que traicionaba la enemistad interna, la que cada uno tenía consigo mismo.
ENO’s excellence with technology, demonstrated on multiple occasions, is once more on display here. Massive screens display anti-war propaganda, an appeal from Srebrenica (fleshed out by an essay, ‘Kada Hotić – Seamstress of Srebrenica’ in the exceptionally lavish programme booklet) alongside scenes of the utmost violence mirrored by the blind violence of today’s football hooligans. Nature also plays a huge part in the visual display, as do Tilmans’s photos of Coventry Cathedral (for whose re-consecration the War Requiem was written; as was, of course, Bliss’s Beatitudes).
The prospect of Natalya Romaniw making her role debut as Cio-Cio-san at English National Opera has given the latest revival of Anthony Minghella’s 2005 production of Madam Butterfly an added flutter. The Welsh soprano has been building an impressive career in bringing opera’s tragic women to life in a startlingly vivid way; the uniquely awful story of the heart-broken Japanese girl who commits ritual suicide – albeit inauthentically – was always likely to be movingly depicted in Romaniw’s hands and indeed this was an absolute triumph.
This is the third or fourth time I have seen Anthony Minghella's stunningly gorgeous production of Puccini's Madam Butterfly at the London Coliseum and in many ways it is the best. Revival director Glen Sheppard has made some delightful tweaks that make Minghella's vision even more effective and the title role is sung by Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw in gloriously impressive style.
Mimi’s sickbed is the floor of her transit van. Rodolfo sits hunched against a wheel outside, the closest he dare get to his dying lover. Musetta makes her showy arrival in a convertible Merc, and an old ice-cream van serves as the Cafe Momus. Trailer-trash stagings are nothing new – many an old camper van has been rolled on to an operatic stage – but here we’re in a proper car park, this unparalleled season’s venue of choice for high art.
A feature of this La bohème is that some characters come up or down from the stage or roam around the parked cars and indeed Rodolfo’s first entrance is when he cycles back from his part-time job delivering takeaways. He hopes to be a playwright but earns additional money writing newspaper reviews. Home isn’t a Parisian garret but a Volkswagen campervan in a car park much the same as the opera was being performed in. It is surrounded by a couple of others and appears to be part of a commune of some sort peopled by those at the fringes of society.
