Royal Opera
David Nice
Seeking the snows of yesteryear, I remember a time when John Schlesinger's Covent Garden Rosenkavalier filled every moment of Hugo von Hofmannsthal's rococo libretto and Richard Strauss's jewel-studded score with life and meaning. 25 years on, its creator is no more, a revival director (Andrew Sinclair) fails to pull a dramatically variable cast together and many startling new productions have shown more readiness to engage with the opera's Viennese time machine - that's to say, any era between the 1740s and the present day - and with greater panache.A strictly period Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A delicious new treat is promised at The Royal Opera House for Christmas: a comic opera by Tchaikovsky that brings the wit and fun of a Russian magical folk tale to the stage in a staging of rare opulence. A story of turbulent love, magical rides through the sky with the Devil, and an impossible task - to get a peasant girl a pair of Catherine the Great's slippers - The Tsarina's Slippers has ballets and Cossack dancing as well as a host of singing characters.Director Francesca Zambello, costume designer Tatiana Noginova and choreographer Alastair Marriott here reveal their preparations, and Read more ...
Ismene Brown
A new production by The Royal Opera of Tchaikovsky's The Tsarina's Slippers opens on Friday at Covent Garden, directed by Francesca Zambello, designed by Mikhail Mokrov and Tatiana Noginova, and with an all-Russian cast of principals conducted by Alexandr Polianichko. Read Ismene Brown's interviews with the creative team elsewhere, and enjoy this feast of design models, costume sketches and production photographs.Click on a picture to enter full view and the slideshow.Sets by Mikhail Mokrov[bg|/OPERA/ismene_brown/tsarinas_slippers/sets]Costume designs by Tatiana NoginovaCharacters: Vakula, a Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Will UK Gold now be permanently available at the Royal Opera House? Or was Italian TV being beamed into the auditorium last night by mistake? The 1970s scene before us actually just meant the return of Richard Jones’s inspired sitcom treatment of Ravel’s L’Heure Espagnole and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi to Covent Garden. Even before the curtain had lifted we were raising a 1970s titter, being prepped for a return to that decade of naughty slap and tickle with an enormous front cloth image of a Viz-like pair of breasts, bursting from their polka-dotted bust darts. In L’Heure Espagnole, we Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Buoyed by winning the Classic FM Innovation award at Friday's Classic FM Gramophone Awards for its cut-price ticket offer for Sun readers, the Royal Opera House was at it again last night with the return of Francesca Zambello's production of Carmen. There was even a short speech from Deborah Bull, welcoming the Sun contingent to the house while, of course, reminding everyone to turn off their mobile phones. For anybody making a first trip to Covent Garden, this would have been a cracking choice. Not only was there Roberto Alagna making his house debut as Don Jose, but also the Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
It finally came just over three hours in. Ferruccio Furlanetto’s gouty Philip II leans his elbow on his chair and begins to grind his head into his right-hand like he's a human pestle and mortar. He first castigates himself for ever having thought that his wife, Elizabeth of Valois - who he suspects of sleeping with his son, Don Carlos - might have fancied his unyielding, aged presence, and then tries to sing his way out of his tortured predicament. With this searchingly eloquent confessional - Furlanetto's rich bass voice resounding like an open fire - came the first - and pretty much the Read more ...
edward.seckerson
The hills are alive with the sound of... well, Donizetti, actually. His mature "Melodramma Semiserio" Linda di Chamounix arrived towards the climax of a prolific career in opera and was clearly a late attempt to capitalise on his successes and give his adoring audiences a little of everything and at great length. This season-opener concert performance at the Royal Opera (recorded, incidentally, by Opera Rara) was not far short in duration of Verdi’s epic Don Carlo, a starry revival of which occupies this very stage imminently.As the subtitle implies, the really startling thing about Linda di Read more ...