Rosalind Plowright / Recensioni

Benjamin Britten's music is as it stands, narrates, dramatically escalates and flares up or pauses, fascinating and gripping. If you take Peter Grimes as a somewhat spooky tale of the lives of simple fishermen, then you have the rough seas and the miserable life within reach before your eyes and ears. That a lonely, somewhat rude man has bad luck with his apprentices and they have an accident, that this repeatedly leads to rumors that it is somehow his fault and that even those who are well disposed towards him fear that "it will start again", if they discover a bruise on the young helper, this reading is part of the mixture of turbulent seas and difficult life. That Peter Grimeshas become one of the most successful British operas since its premiere in 1945, is nevertheless a phenomenon. Not because of the music, because it stands, so to speak, beyond any doubt, on a secure foundation of original genius, tradition and moderate modernity. No, it's the level beyond. The fact that Britten and his premiere Grimes were gay and a couple, and in what was then still officially post-Victorian homophobic England, so self-confidently stood on the ramp with an opera that at least allows biographical conclusions, is amazing. Because old template and nature setting, one could have actually recognized that it was also about a processed, but actually clearly recognizable statement on the special life topic (or risk) of Britten and Pears. But obviously you didn't see what you didn't want to see. Or was allowed.

After his stage debut, the operetta "Paul Bunyan", Benjamin Britten's "Peter Grimes", op. 33, is his first opera. It premiered on June 7, 1945 at London's Sadler's Wells Theatre. Montagu Slater (1902-56) wrote the libretto of this three-act opera and prologue based on the verse narrative "The Borough" (1810) by George Crabbe (1754-1832). Josef Kaiser impresses as the torn outsider Peter Grimes with a magnificent heroic tenor. A high point of performance is demanded of him in the short pas de deux with his second assistant John ( Gieorgij Puchalski ) in the choreography by Thomas Wilhelm . Tenderly he holds the already dead in his arms, who comes to life again in his imagination and finally disappears from his hands forever. Andrew Foster-Williams as Captain Balstrode is also attracted to and succumbs to the aide's charisma. With his warmly timbred baritone, he created a touching study of a sad Pierrot who yearns for love. The Swedish soprano Agneta Eichenholz, dressed in a chic trouser suit, was pleasing as the emancipated teacher Ellen Orford with her vocal opulence. There was also a reunion with the Bayreuth legend Hanna Schwarz , whose Brangäne, Waltraute, Erda, but above all her Fricka in the Chereau-Ring prepared unforgettable evenings. The bizarre role of the pub landlady "Auntie", who appeared here more like a madam in a body-tight red pants suit, occasionally accompanied by her nieces, Kiandra Howarth and Frederikke Kampmann , dressed in pink. With this, director Loy gave his production a pointed coat of paint, through which the dark tragedy slipped into the wake of the tragicomedy, which was quite justified. It was also pleasing to see Rosalind Plowright again in the role of the widow Mrs. Sedley in the hippie outfit of the legendary Woodstock Festival. One of her many soprano, later mezzo-soprano roles was also Fricka, which she sang at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in the 2003/04 season. She also provided the comic side of the evening with her performance.

Canopies flapped on a blustery June night but nothing could shake this scintillating new production out of its stride. Working against imposing yet fluid wood-panel designs by her fellow countryman takis, the Greek director Rodula Gaitanou has made OHP’s intractably wide stage seem like a walk in the park. Alison Langer’s cheeky factotum Oscar and Rosalind Plowright’s imperious sorceress Madame Arvidson were superbly defined, adding juice to the melodrama and singing with absolute conviction despite the silliness of their roles. Benjamin Bevan and John Savournin trod a fine line between comedy and darkness as the two would-be assassins, Ribbing and Horn, and there was a predictably strong cameo from Ross Ramgobin as the impecunious sailor Cristiano.

A masked ball is a time of play and role-play, celebrating the duality, the conflicting selves within us all, allowing us to set aside our everyday public mask put on an alter ego for the evening. It seems appropriate then that Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera has a deep fissure running down the middle of its drama. Is it a fragile, unfulfilled love story – Rattigan or David Lean with an Italian accent and rather more blood – or is it an exuberant piece of gothic horror with a love story and political agenda tacked on? The answer is, of course, both, and that’s the problem with Verdi’s mid-career drama: you never know which opera you’re going to get.

The young Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw was a hit in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at Garsington last month and this performance could be her last before she becomes an international star Those of us who heard the young Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw sing Tatyana in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at Garsington last month were hit by a musical coup de foudre: where had this wonderful singer been hiding, and what else could she do? The answer to the second question has come with her performance as Lisa in the same composer’s The Queen of Spades at Opera Holland Park in London. This is a darker and more psychologically complex role, but she brings to it the same exquisite artistry, and the same luminosity of tone: catch her there before she goes – as she surely soon will – into international orbit.

Opera Holland Park brings its current season to a close with a new production of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades, directed by Rodula Gaitanou and conducted by Peter Robinson. Musically, it’s exceptionally strong, though there are moments of theatrical unevenness. Gaitanou updates the work to the 1870s. The haunted rococo St Petersburg of Tchaikovsky’s imaginings has become the morally hypocritical city of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, where we first see high society assembling in a posh-looking cafe, as Peter Wedd’s Herman and his army cronies look on and gossip. Rosalind Plowright’s decrepit Countess, surrounded by obsequious religious types, has buried her past and her conscience beneath an assumed veneer of sanctimony. Dostoevskyan riff-raff, meanwhile, lurk on the banks of the Winter canal, where Natalya Romaniw’s Liza meets Herman for their last, tragic encounter.

With The Little Greats season Opera North is revisiting the imaginative idea of presenting a programme of one-act operas which they first did with Eight Little Greats in 2004. This time six operas were presented in Leeds in flexible programmes, which tour in fixed double bills, with operas by Janacek, Ravel, Bernstein, Gilbert & Sullivan, Leoncavallo and Mascagni. For the weekend of 20-21 October 2017, we took the opportunity to catch all six operas performed over two days at the Grand Theatre, Leeds. On Friday 20 October we caught Janacek's Osud and Ravel's L'enfant et les sortileges, both directed by Annabel Arden and conducted by Martin Andre, sets by Charles Edwards and costumes by Hannah Clark. Janacek's Osud featured John Graham Hall as Zivny, Giselle Allen as Mila, Rosalind Plowright as Mila's mother, Peter Auty as Dr Suda, Richard Burkhard as Konecny, Ann Taylor as Miss Stuhla, Bryn Mashburn or Rafi Sherman as Doubek as a boy, and Warren Gillespie as Doubek as an adult.

Leonard Bernstein, composer and on this occasion lyricist too, knew precisely what he wanted for Trouble in Tahiti (1952). He listed his demands at the front of the score: simplicity of execution, clarity of diction, swift moving action and no pauses for scene changes. Opera North, in a stylish new production by Matthew Eberhardt, conducted by Tobias Ringborg, delivered exactly that, as part of the latest offering in the company’s Little Greats festival of short operas. Annabel Arden’s clear-as-possible production, handsomely designed in a 1930-40s setting by Charles Edwards, was blessed with fine principals. John Graham-Hall, a connoisseur of Janáček’s difficult, high-tenor roles, handled the challenging part of Živný elegantly, with Giselle Allen tender, obsessive and voluptuous as Míla, the muse-wife. Rosalind Plowright was luxury casting as Míla’s nightmare Mother. Christopher Nairne, a member of the chorus of Opera North, stood out in the cameo role of student Verva. Martin André, conducting, and the large ensemble cast and Opera North orchestra put the strongest case for this irresistible oddity.

If it had been merely bloodcurdling, Seattle Opera’s “Elektra,” which opened at McCaw Hall on Saturday night, would be a less astounding achievement. What this stunning production manages to do, without shortchanging the violence of the action or the uncompromising vehemence of Richard Strauss’ music, is to reveal the humane and lyrical side of both in their full glory. It is the orchestra that for much of the time fulminates around her. This conflict justly reflects Elektra’s embattled isolation in a hostile world — and when she is reunited with her long-exiled brother Orest, the vocal and orchestral elements aptly coalesce in a newfound, gleamingly sensuous (and Straussian) unanimity. The Orest in Saturday’s cast, bass-baritone Alfred Walker from New Orleans, made a sonorously impressive company debut. Two other major local debuts were British mezzo-soprano Rosalind Plowright’s tormented, vicious, yet pitiable and curiously dignified Klytämnestra, sung with an intensity that was indeed bloodcurdling, and German soprano Irmgard Vilsmaier’s sympathetic Chrysothemis, also well sung though with a touch of strain at the top of the voice. A more familiar figure locally, Victoria-born tenor Richard Margison, was an excellent Aegisth, and could hardly be blamed for not vocally penetrating the orchestral maelstrom with his offstage cries for help.

Seattle Opera’s “Elektra” comes at you like a runaway train with the throttle fully open. There’s no getting off, but it’s an exhilarating ride. The Richard Strauss opera is beautiful and terrifying, with bloody strokes of violence and heartbreaking humanity, a score of immense complexity that’s frenetic and harsh, lyrical and even sweet. And it’s performed in one long act without intermission. After you have met the mother you can begin to see Elektra’s point. Klytamnestra is a dragon lady of terrifying prospect, bejeweled in gold, hunched and wielding her cane like a weapon. Her menace is chilling and so is her pitiful vulnerability. Mezzo soprano Rosalind Plowright was a wonder in her scene-stealing portrait of Klytamnestra. Her grand entrance is a spectacle that rivals Cecile B. DeMile for gaudy grandeur as the queen and her garish retinue (brilliantly costumed by Melanie Taylor Burgess) flood Wolfram Skalicki’s charcoal set in a burst of color and chaos.