Unreleased cut
Recent rapturous musings about Huw Montague Rendall and curiosity about Aigul Akhmetshina‘s return to the Met as Rosina in May have prompted the box to share a recent sample of the pair in “Dunque io son.”
Antonio Pappano
63 pieces since 2006 — at 12 companies, most often at Royal Opera House.
63
pieces
12
companies
21
years
By company
Royal Opera House 16
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden 3
Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia 2
Metropolitan Opera 2
Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie 2
London Symphony Orchestra 1
Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia 1
Royal Opera, Covent Garden 1
Salzburg Easter Festival 1
Salzburg Festival 1
Staatsoper Berlin 1
Wiener Staatsoper 1
16 pieces as Royal Opera House — stats above show all coverage for Antonio Pappano.
View all
Burning woman
I count myself as privileged to have witnessed Götterdämmerungat the Royal Opera House during this season’s revival of Keith Warner’s Ring.
Lady first
This revival of Phyllida Lloyd’s 2002 Macbeth production was probably the most anticipated event of the Royal Opera House 2017/2018 season, due mostly to Anna Netrebko’s return to Covent Garden after a three-year absence.
Digging in the dirt
Even those of us who consider Guillaume Tell Rossini’s greatest opera understand why it has not been his most frequently staged.
Queen of the damned
“Semiramide—a better opera than this dude expected!”
Rooting for the underdoge
“Take a good deal of trouble with it, because it is a fine subject, delicate and full of pathos.”
A Pole in the head
Enthusiasm is contagious–you have to cover up carefully lest it make you sick.
Grail mix
Contemporary stagings of Parsifal tend to be spare, abstract affairs scrubbed of religious associations, knights in armor and, sometimes, a grail.
Critical care
The experience of watching Wagner’s final opera Parsifal is frequently elevated to a spiritual occurrence, and productions have historically emphasized the religious dimension of the opera’s core themes of redemption and the dangers of temptation.
The woman in white
This new DVD
Puccini three ways
Puccini’s evening of one-act operas Il Trittico seems to be riding a wave of popularity over the last few years, with a new production at the Met and several high-profile productions in America and Europe.
I am a camera
I would never have imagined that the story of Anna Nicole Smith could be today’s entry in a long line of opera’s “fallen women”—pop culture’s reinvention of Violetta, Manon Lescaut, and Lulu. But that is indeed what composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Richard Thomas have created in Anna Nicole, commissioned by England’s Royal Opera House […]
À l’opéra ce soir
When I was a kid growing up in Paris, there was a weekly TV broadcast of a theater play called Au Théatre Ce Soir that I loved. But that my father would rarely let me watch this show, because the plays were all were silly comedies, usually badly acted and filmed without any creativity or […]
Loy meets girl
Christof Loy’s highly controversial 2009 production of Berg’s Lulu for The Royal Opera House has been released on DVD (Opus Arte), with beautifully realized film direction by Robin Lough. Antonio Pappano and the Orchestra of The Royal Opera House lead an extraordinary cast of singing actors in plumbing the musical and psychological depths of this […]
super mario
Member of the cher public Max writes: Don’t know if you’ve gotten reports on this yet, but Jonas Kaufmann‘s Cavaradossi at the Royal Opera (May 23) was singing like I haven’t heard since young Domingo (only Domingo never had that kind of ease on top). You could feel the waves of sound from his “Vittoria” […]
Giudici, ad Angela!
La Cieca has found a few fragments from last night’s performance of Tosca at the ROH — only about 15 minutes of music, but enough, perhaps, to give a hint of the suitability of Angela Gheorghiu for the title role. La Cieca’s take (based on an in-house mike, remember!) is that the Roman diva is […]