Anna Prohaska reigns supreme in programme of Cleopatra and Dido-inspired Baroque arias in her late night Prom.
The advantage of staging a rare opera such as Cavalli's Hipermestra at Glyndebourne this year is that the director can work with a blank canvas without audience’s preconceptions.
Despite the beautiful sensitivity of La Nuova Musica, coupled with some truly sublime singing, the silliness of Cavalli’s opera is sometimes overplayed in this semi-staged production; less is, sometimes, more.
Clever staging and a high standard of acting does much to happily while away the three hours of this baroque opera in the second of ETO's Baroque extravaganza.
Themed around legendary African queens Dido and Cleopatra, Prohaska’s recital with the virtuosi of Il Giardino Armonico could serve as a template for the ideal Baroque programme.
Ensemble Correspondances give a virtuoso display of polychoral music from Marc-Antoine Charpentier and his Italian contemporaries.
La Calisto is a delicious mash-up of two classical legends: Jupiter’s seduction of Diana’s acolyte Calisto and Diana’s own romance with the shepherd Endymion. The plot is helter-skelter, Anne Ridler’s translation of Giovanni Faustini’s libretto is sassy and fun. I can’t imagine being more entertained by an evening’s chamber opera.
Francesco Cavalli's Egisto is a true feast for the senses in director Benjamin Lazar's conception, realised with conductor Vincent Dumestre at the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg.
“... and as Venice in many things surpasses all places else where I have been, so are these Operas the most excellent of all its glorious Vanities.” So wrote the entranced English traveller Richard Bargrave in 1655. These days, however, Venice travels to England in the form of the English Touring Opera’s 2013 autumn season production.
Describing its new production of Francesco Cavalli’s 1668 opera Eliogabalo, the Gotham Chamber Opera compares the exploits of titular depraved Roman emperor Heliogabalus to Salome. There’s an obvious mistake here: Salome is an opera; Heliogabalus was a historical figure.
If Vienna is the holy temple of classical music (Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Strauss, Bruckner and Mahler all spent large tracts of their careers here), then the Musikverein is its holy of holies. Just soaking in all that history makes a visit here into a special occasion, and the heavily gilt halls are as opulent and redolent of empire as you might imagine.
Malgré son évident intérêt musical, La Calisto a jusqu’ici attiré l’attention des metteurs en scène avant tout pour les jeux sur les registres et le(s) genre(s) que le livret de Giovanni Faustini, basé sur les Métamorphoses, laissait entrevoir.
Création posthume de Francesco Cavalli Eliogabalo retrace le court règne de cet empereur romain dépravé et pervers dans une mise en scène carnavalesque et explicite.