text:
'Das klinget so herrlich' (That sounds so splendid) from Act I of Die Zauberflöte (1791) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91)
Papageno and Pamina are trying to escape Sarastro's temple when they are interrupted by the villainous Monostatos. Luckily, Papageno strikes up a sprightly dance tune on his magic bells, whose sound comes from the glockenspiel. Monostatos's fury vanishes in an instant, and he and his minions, enchanted, dance away happily singing. Papageno and Pamina comment that magic bells like these would surely cure the ills of the world.
'Caro elisir! Sei mio!' (Wonderful elixir! You're mine!) from Act I of L'elisir d'amore (1832) by Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848)
Nemorino, inspired by the story of Tristan and Isolde, has purchased an 'elixir of love' (in fact, cheap Bordeaux) from the quack doctor Dulcamara. He believes that he has only to drink the elixir for his adored Adina to fall for him within 24 hours. As the wine goes to his head Nemorino feels cheerful. When Adina arrives, he pretends to ignore her, and breaks into song, his merry 'la-ra-las' accompanied by strumming strings. Donizetti wittily contrasts Nemorino's jolly wordless melody with Adina's growing irritation, as she tries to get his attention and – for once – is ignored.
'Den Tag seh' ich erscheinen' (The day I see dawning) from Act II of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1867) by Richard Wagner (1813–83)
The pedantic town clerk Sixtus Beckmesser's attempts to serenade the beautiful Eva Pogner, but his efforts are constantly interrupted by the cobbler Hans Sachs. With the excuse that he has to finish Beckmesser's shoes in time for the next day's singing competition, Sachs marks each of Beckmesser's musical and poetical faults with a stern blow of his hammer. Wagner cleverly contrasts Beckmesser's pompous song – accompanied by faltering mandoline, full of florid ornamentation and awkward rhymes – with Sachs's dry comments. And then it turns out that Beckmesser is serenading the wrong girl anyway!
'Gonzalve! Gonzalve!': Duet for Concepion and Gonzalve from L'Heure espagnole (1911) by Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Concepcion's arranged a romantic rendezvous with the poet Gonzalve while her elderly husband Torquemada is out. But things aren't going her way. First she has to get rid of the muleteer Ramiro, who wants his watch mended. Then when Gonzalve arrives he's more interested in declaiming florid poetry (depicted by Ravel in swooping vocal lines and grandiose orchestral crescendos) than getting down to business. Concepcion isn't impressed and makes frantic attempts to get Gonzalve to concentrate on love-making – but to no avail.
'There's no need to fear' and 'Up! Drink! Up!' from scene 3 of Le Grand Macabre (1978, revised 1996) by György Ligeti (1923–2006)
The grim reaper Nekrotzar announces that he will destroy the world at midnight, and recruits the wine-taster Piet the Pot and the astronomer Astradamors to help him. Piet and Astradamors suggest a last feast – washed down with plenty of wine. They dance round Nekrotzar, shouting and insulting him in a jolly folksong-like tune, and order him to drink. Nekrotzar initially prefers to make pompous apocalyptic pronouncements in sonorous tones, but is tempted by the smell of alcohol. The music dissolves into a demonic trio, with jazzy syncopated rhythms and thudding percussion, as Piet and Astradamors continue to mock 'Tsar Nekro', and he doggedly downs wine, accompanied by loud orchestral hiccups. The scene soon collapses into anarchy. The following aria, sung in code by the crazed Gepopo, Chief of the Secret Political Police, gives you an idea of the kind of anarchy Ligeti can conjure!
What are your favourite comic moments in opera?
Il barbiere di Siviglia runs 19 September–5 October 2014. Tickets are still available.
L'elisir d'amore runs 18 November–13 December 2014. Tickets are still available. The production is a co-production with Opéra National de Paris and is given with generous philanthropic support from Mrs Aline Foriel-Destezet.
Die Zauberflöte runs 23 February–11 March 2015. Tickets are still available. The production is given with generous philanthropic support from The Jean Sainsbury Royal Opera House Fund.]]>
Anna Nicole @RoyalOperaHouse was stunning tonight. My first opera and I loved it. #ROHannanicole — Nathan Elwick (@NathanElwick) September 11, 2014
Under-25s seemed to have a ball @ #ROHannanicole tonite. My 4th time & F- and C-words have palled a tad. E-MW's the bees-knees again! — Hugh Canning (@hugh_canning) September 12, 2014
Nope, not enraptured by #ROHannanicole. Score felt half-baked, the libretto bordering inane... — Leeann Chen (@Leeann_Ch) September 11, 2014
#ROHannanicole #fabulous #funny Great seeing the ROH push boundaries. Anna was #incredible — ForArtSake_K (@MyArtSake) September 12, 2014
#ROHannanicole Anna Nicole was so daring and moving. THANK YOU to the ROH for letting people see something this great for as little as £1. — lily goodchild (@lilygoodchild) September 11, 2014
Very few words to describe #ROHAnnaNicole. Absolutely loved it. A true tragedy for Our Times. — Ted Black (@TedLBlack) September 11, 2014
Last night I discovered I like my opera with a side of popcorn and pole-dancing. #ROHannanicole @RoyalOperaHouse — Anna Ledwich (@baronessledwich) September 12, 2014
What a performance! The enthusiasm in the end says it all. Looking forward to a great opera season. #ROHannanicole #ROHopeningnight — Michael Kitromilidis (@MKitromilidis) September 11, 2014
A selection of your shots from the Season-opening student/under-25 performance:
Press reviews:
Telegraph ★★★★★
What's On Stage ★★★★
Arts Desk ★★★
Evening Standard ★★
Guardian ★★
What did you think of Anna Nicole?
Anna Nicole runs until 24 September 2014. Tickets are still available.
The first performance is a student-only production with tickets priced £1–£25. Find out more about ROH Students. ROH Students is generously made possible by the Bunting Family and Simon Robey.
When it comes to partying, Anna Nicole's party scene leaves the likes of La traviata and La bohème looking like a teddy bears' picnic. Not for nothing does the libretto capitalize the jamboree as the 'PARTAY! scene'.
Composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and librettist Richard Thomas dish up the goods with lavish hedonism, but also ensure – almost as inevitably as the party itself – that the scene is laced with a healthy dose of despair.
The PARTAY! comes a short way into Act II. Anna has married her new husband, the octogenarian billionaire J. Howard Marshall II. Her reward is a ranch for her little son Daniel and enough painkillers, vodka and Jimmy Choo shoes to distract her from the crippling back pain, the consequence of her extensive breast augmentation.
The scene is nearly palindromic in structure. Turnage carefully delineates each section, and with each shift provides us a new glimpse of Anna's fate. It's all framed by a huge chorus – pretty much the entire cast, who pack the stage, crowding around the onstage three-piece band. Anna leads them all in a delirious back-and-forth exchange, sometimes naive, sometimes almost solemnly religious – but with the strongest sense that her audience has arrived.
Turnage kicks off with a bold syncopated theme in the trumpets. It's impressively simple, constructed as a four-bar question and answer, where the question and answer are almost mirror versions of each other. After we hear it the first time through, Anna and the chorus rapidly gabble at each other: 'Party till ya get laid, party till the drug raid, party till your brain fries, party till your youth dies.'
The chorus recedes into the background for the next section, a flirtatious duo between Anna and the lawyer Stern. Turnage builds an intimate, seedy feel through a scoring for sustained woodwind chords underpinned by an agitated bass guitar line, performed in the premiere run by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. This is our first prolonged exposure to Stern; he made occasional appearances throughout Act I, but was always chased away by a furious chorus and affectionately dismissed by Anna as being too early – 'Get outta here, You're not on yet'. Now he is in his element for the first time, loving Anna, goading himself and her.
In the following central section Anna's mother Virgie enters, grasping little Daniel. She blazes recrimination and disgust, her fury tracked by a steadily ticking cymbal in the drum kit of the stage band. Anna is silent here, but the chorus now act on her behalf – whether as a mouthpiece or putting words in her mouth, we can't tell. They give Virgie the cold shoulder, bullying her off the stage as they blankly intone 'blah blah yadda yadda'.
As Virgie is shooed away, Anna's back and forth with the chorus returns, now up tempo, racing towards a heady proclamation of Anna as 'the patron saint of parties'. She finally adopts the simple tune we first heard on the trumpets as her own, in a fundamental declaration of her mantra: 'Live before you die, laugh before you weep, drink before you're sober, pass out before you sleep.' Stern interrupts her to urge 'to the camera!', underpinned by a new motif of a rapid trumpet ornament – another taste of the plague that will ruin Anna's life.
What happens next? J. Howard Marshall II has a heart attack, and Anna's lifelong battle for his inheritance begins. We'll hear an elongation of the simple trumpet melody in Anna's fury at the Marshall family's response, as she commands Stern to 'Crush them like a bug, Turn them inside out, Beat them like a pinata And watch my money fall out'. It's no longer PARTAY! – only a sour remnant of the party that always ends.
Anna Nicole runs 11–24 September 2014. Tickets are still available.
The first performance is a student-only production with tickets priced £1–£25. Find out more about ROH Students. ROH Students is generously made possible by the Bunting Family and Simon Robey.
Music Director of The Royal Opera Antonio Pappano recently spoke to BBC Radio 3's In Tune ahead of a Season that will see him conduct seven main stage works at Covent Garden.
'I had a really good rest this summer following a non-stop 18 months that featured some very exciting and important pieces at the Royal Opera House, in Rome [with the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia], La Scala and at the Salzburg Festival,' he told presenter Suzy Klein.
'For the orchestra, Anna Nicole is a big deal,' says the Music Director of the Season-opening return of Mark-Anthony Turnage's opera. 'It's hard to define what it is - jazz, pop, a pseudo-American musical idiom. It brings out something new for them. They have to find something different
He's also excited about the return of Verdi's I due Foscari after a 19-year absence from the Covent Garden stage: 'It's not often heard but it's an opera with a wonderful pathos and a wonderful relationship between a father and his son - Verdi doesn't have too many of them! It's sad from the beginning and there's very little respite. It has a darkness which I would say is akin to Simon Boccanegra, but in embryonic form.'
Plácido Domingo will sing the role of Francesco Foscari, and Antonio is looking forward to seeing the baritone inhabit a role which the Music Director sees as perfect for him: 'He needs the stage like bread and water. It brings out something that's very touching in him, something that we didn't see before as the romantic hero. Here he's caught between his duty as leader of state and trying to free his son from imprisonment and exile. He's in a terrible dilemma and to see him emote in this way is something quite beautiful.'
As well as six operas, Antonio will also conduct an orchestral concert at Covent Garden in May 2015, intended to show off the versatility of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, as well as make them more visible: 'We're doing a wonderful programme: Ravel, Chausson's Poème de l'amour et de la mer with Anna Caterina Antonacci, Fancy Free by Bernstein and Scriabin's Le Poème de l'Extase. It should bring the roof off.'
With such a busy Season ahead, leading both The Royal Opera and the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, how does he switch off?
'It's difficult for any conductor. You're involved with public relations, with sponsors and the administrative elements of the job. I lead two institutions, and they complement each other wonderfully - a symphony orchestra and the opera house. Each demands a tremendous amount of loyalty, attention, and physical energy from me. I'm very fortunate in that part of my job is meeting a lot of people and I've met so many wonderful people in the past couple of years, especially sponsors. We've got a real family at Covent Garden and in Rome. I'm really proud of that.'
Antonio has regularly commented on the importance of the arts in society, something echoed during his In Tune interview: 'The arts are always viewed with suspicion, and we have to justify ourselves - why do we get money? Poetry, beauty, theatre and drama is something that every human being needs, in one form or another. And it's a beautiful thing.'
Antonio Pappano conducts Anna Nicole, I due Foscari, Tristan und Isolde, Andrea Chénier, Król Roger, an orchestral concert and Guillaume Tell during the 2014/15 Season.]]>
The Royal Opera's 2014/15 Season opens tomorrow night (11 September) with a special student and under-25 performance of Anna Nicole.
The performance will be even more special than usual, with star treatment for ticket holders including a free Birra Moretti or non-alcoholic cocktail for early birds. We'll also be rolling out the red carpet used for award ceremonies such as the BAFTAs at the entrance. The Paul Hamlyn Hall will be filled with the sound of a live jazz band and bar staff will be serving a specially-created 'Anna Nicole cocktail' throughout the night.
Our restaurants have also been caught up in Anna Nicole fever, and will be offering a menu inspired by the opera and all things American, including hamburgers, macaroni cheese and pastrami on rye. The Amphitheatre Restaurant will offer a main course and a beer for £8. View the full menu.
Discounts also extend to the programme book, available at this performance for just £4.
Prizes will be on offer, with the opportunity to win a pair of tickets to The Royal Ballet's Don Quixote from our selfie-station in the Paul Hamlyn Hall. To enter, snap a selfie on the night and tag it with #ROHannanicole on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Although there is no dress code, feel free to dress to the nines - feather boas are positively encouraged!
Anna Nicole runs 11–24 September 2014. Tickets are still available.
This first performance is reserved for students and under-25s only, with tickets priced £1–£25. Find out more about ROH Students. ROH Students is generously made possible by the Bunting Family and Simon Robey.]]>
It's hardly surprising that our media send contradictory messages about female body size: they reflect a general confusion in society. What is surprising, perhaps, is that scientific research into the matter, which we might expect to be calmer and more clear-headed, can cloud the issue with equal gusto.
Curvaceousness is controlled by female sex hormones, and has been shown as an important factor in determining female attractiveness across Western society. Interestingly, women with large breasts and narrow waists have a distinct physiological profile, which includes a significantly increased concentration of hormones determining the probability of conception. The hourglass shape therefore serves as cue of fecundity and health to prospective partners.
But, if large breasts offer evolutionary benefits, what can science tell those not blessed with a prominent upper-frontal superstructure about the possibility of scaling higher up the Darwinian ladder? Can they alter their chances?
Perhaps the first thing would be to think again. There are plenty of negatives to having large breasts, ranging from biomechanical difficulties (when the weight of large breasts adversely affects one's posture and causes back problems) to links with the more aggressive types of breast cancer (currently unexplained).
Despite the numerous potential problems, the male perception of larger breasts as a sign of attractiveness in Western society has led to perpetual attempts by women to increase their bust size.
In the 20th century, the ever-increasing sophistication of surgical techniques and the manufacture of new materials led to some brave early experiments. The earliest, in 1899, used such mineral oils as vaseline and paraffin – yes, paraffin – as a body defect filler. Unfortunately, negative side effects began to appear. Once injected, paraffin often tended to disperse within the body and cause the formation of secondary deposits: so-called 'paraffinomas'. These were lumps which could pop up almost anywhere, and which were virtually impossible to remove.
The next big step in breast augmentation was the development of silicone implants. Very few medical devices have had their safety tested so extensively or created so much controversy as silicone (now used in plastic bags, but initially injected directly into the tissue). After much investigation, there is currently no convincing evidence linking breast implants to an increased risk of breast cancer, connective tissue disease, offspring effects or neurological disorder. But the risks of local complications (infection, rupture of the implant and painful capsule contraction) still exist. And the negative effects of breast augmentation surgery on the lactating potential of the implantee have never been disputed.
The psychological aspects of cosmetic breast surgery have been the subject of scientific interest for nearly half a century. The most dramatic statistic was the two-to-threefold increase of suicide rates compared to the general population. Naturally, it raised a worrying and disturbing question about the cosmetic surgery itself being a predisposing factor for suicide.
However, all the studies which reported an increased suicide risk among breast augmentation patients compared these women with the general population. But an in-depth look into the demographics demonstrated that implantees are in fact quite different: they tend to display more common alcohol and tobacco use, they have more numerous sexual partners and higher divorce rates and they are more likely to be receiving psychotherapy. Based on these criteria, one could expect to see a five-fold increase in the suicide rate among this group, rather than two to three times – and so it could be argued that the augmentation actually reduces the suicide risk.
So where does that leave us? There are no easy answers to the moral, sexual or psychological questions raised by cosmetic breast surgery – but in Anna Nicole we have what is (probably) opera's first attempt to address them.
This is an extract from Peter Osin's article 'Big and Beautiful' in the Royal Opera's programme book for Anna Nicole, available during performances and from the ROH Shop.
Anna Nicole runs 11–24 September 2014. Tickets are still available. The first performance is a student-only production with tickets priced £1–£25. Find out more about ROH Students. ROH Students is generously made possible by the Bunting Family and Simon Robey.]]>
'American Dream, American Dream', sings Anna Nicole in Mark-Anthony Turnage's opera, 'I'm gonna rape that goddamn American dream, I'm gonna tear it open and lap up the cream'. It's one of many operas that question the American Dream, in which anyone with ambition, talent and a strong work ethic can achieve fame and fortune – and ask how desirable or attainable that dream really is:
Giacomo Puccini's La fanciulla del West examines American ways of life both good and bad. The corrupt sheriff Jack Rance and the homesick miners trapped in California by their desire to make a quick fortune demonstrate the dangers of a society that places great value on money and social status. But Puccini's heroine Minnie has typically 'American' virtues: bravery, honesty and a sense of adventure. Ultimately, Minnie's integrity gives her the courage to reject conventional dreams of financial and social success and leave California for a new life with her lover Dick Johnson.
Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden created an optimistic vision of American society in Paul Bunyan, which celebrates the same pioneering spirit that makes Puccini's Minnie so likeable. The gentle giant Paul Bunyan brings together a community of lumberjacks to tame the 'virgin forest' of America, and later helps them to find work as farmers, manual labourers and businessmen. In this cheerful operetta, America is seen as a land of exciting opportunities (one or two satirical snipes from Auden aside).
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht on the other hand, took a far darker view, making America a byword for greed and corruption. In 1931's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, three criminals found a city in the American desert devoted to hedonism and financial profit. The consumerist paradise soon becomes a hotbed of corruption and inhumanity. The hero Jimmy is condemned to death for being unable to pay a bar bill. When he appeals to God the people tell him that God cannot punish them – they are already in Hell.
Other operas show how America's opportunities are not available to everyone. Rose Maurrant, the blue-collar heroine of Weill's Street Scene, knows that her boss's promises to help her 'sing on Broadway' will come to nothing. She and her poet boyfriend Sam Kaplan nourish ambitions to escape their humdrum existence, but even this dream is denied when Rose's father murders her mother. In George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, the African-American community of Catfish Row is condemned to perpetual poverty due to racial prejudice. Love can flourish (like the tender passion between Porgy and Bess), but the only character to profit financially in this ghetto is the drug-dealer Sportin' Life, who eventually lures Bess away with the promise of a glamorous life in New York.
Later in the 20th century, composers questioned whether the American Dream is desirable even if achieved. Leonard Bernstein portrayed the boredom of comfortable American suburbia and the claustrophobia of the prosperous middle-class family in Trouble in Tahiti and A Quiet Place– having explored racial prejudice and gang warfare in his hit Romeo and Juliet-inspired musical West Side Story. Stewart Wallace's Harvey Milk tells the true story of a politician who longs for 'an American Dream without prejudice' but is assassinated for his beliefs. And the title character of Nixon in China and J. Robert Oppenheimer in Doctor Atomic, at one point seen as icons of the American success story, are depicted by John Adams as tormented souls plagued with self-doubt.
Even the ambitious Anna Nicole realizes that the American Dream isn't all it's cracked up to be. Hounded by the press, she finally turns on her country: 'O America, you dirty whore, I gave you everything but you wanted more. I wanted more'. For some, the American Dream can turn out to be more like a nightmare.
Anna Nicole runs from 11–24 September 2014. Tickets are still available. The first performance is open to students only, with tickets priced £1–£25. Find out more about ROH Students. ROH Students is generously made possible by the Bunting Family and Simon Robey.
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny runs 10 March–4 April 2015. Tickets will go on general sale 27 January 2015. The production is given with generous philanthropic support from Richard and Ginny Salter, The Kurt Foundation for Music in New York, NY and The Royal Opera Circle.]]>
As The Royal Opera prepares for the return of Mark-Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole, former editor of Heat magazine Julian Linley joins us for a new podcast. He looks back at how Anna Nicole Smith's dramatic life and untimely death were portrayed in the world of celebrity journalism.
'Anna Nicole's was a very visual story,' he explains, 'it was the picture of this very glamorous young woman who had a very trashy kind of appeal, getting married to a guy who was really old. The image of the two of them together: that was the story.'
Smith rose to fame in the 1990s when she appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine but really caught the media's attention when she married the octogenarian oil tycoon, J. Howard Marshall, in 1994. He died just 14 months later and the rest of Smith's life was dominated by disputes over Marshall's fortune, bankruptcy and, later, a dispute over the paternity of her daughter. Smith died in 2007, aged 39, as a result of a prescription drug overdose.
So what has changed since Smith's death?
'There has definitely been a cultural shift away from celebrity,' says Linley, 'I think that there has really been a turning point culturally because of technology – Facebook, Instagram, YouTube – it allows anyone to be a celebrity. But rather than being a celebrity to a big audience, as Anna Nicole Smith was, now you can be a celebrity within your community. It's turned the cameras very firmly on us all.'
Anna Nicole runs from 11-24 September. Tickets are still available.
The first performance is a student-only production with tickets priced £1–£25. Find out more about ROH Students. ROH Students is generously made possible by the Bunting Family and Simon Robey.]]>
The Story Begins…
Former waitress Anna Nicole leaves her home town of Mexia, Texas, determined to become famous and adored. Breast enlargements and a meeting with an admirer help her to achieve her dream, but she soon discovers that success comes at a terrible price.
Who Was Anna Nicole?
Anna Nicole the opera was inspired by the life of Anna Nicole Smith, a former Playboy and glamour model and actress. At the age of 26 she married 89-year-old billionaire J. Howard Marshall. He died a year later, and Smith entered into a lengthy battle over her husband's will with his family. She continued to work as an actress, model and TV personality, but suffered from weight gain and became addicted to prescription drugs. Anna Nicole Smith died of the cumulative effect of prescription drugs on 8 February 2007.
An American Dream
Mark-Anthony Turnage's music brilliantly depicts the different stages of Anna Nicole's life through a wide range of musical styles. These include jazz, blues and music theatre. The score also contains flamboyant coloratura for Anna, dramatic operatic expressionism (including the Act II interlude depicting Anna's changes of fortune) and passages of heartfelt lyricism, particularly Anna's aria mourning the death of her son.
Trapped by the Media
Richard Jones's production highlights the dark humour in Anna Nicole's story and illustrates the intrusive nature of the media in today's society. Anna Nicole may think she wants to become famous, but the strange camera monsters and sinister attendants that stalk her as she strives to achieve the 'American dream' invade and finally destroy her life.
A Royal Opera Commission
Anna Nicole was commissioned by The Royal Opera, and had its premiere at the Royal Opera House on 17 February 2011. Many of the original cast return for this 2014 revival, including Eva-Maria Westbroek as Anna Nicole. The production was televised, and released as a DVD in August 2011. Anna Nicole has also been performed in Dortmund, and was the last opera to be performed (in Jones's production) by New York City Opera in 2014.
Anna Nicole runs 11-24 September 2014. Tickets are still available.
The first performance is a student-only production with tickets priced £1–£25. Find out more about ROH Students. ROH Students is generously made possible by the Bunting Family and Simon Robey.]]>
Opera has long been a vehicle for decidedly dark comedy, from nasty practical jokes to decidedly ambiguous happy-ever-afters. Here, we take a closer look at five of our favourites:
Così fan tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1790)
Mozart referred to his third and final collaboration with librettist Lorenzo da Ponte as an 'opera buffa', and it's habitually labeled a comedy – there are plenty of laughs to be found amid the confusion, chaos and mistaken identity of this meticulously crafted masterpiece. But at heart, this opera is about two sisters (Dorabella and Fiordiligi) who are tricked into swapping lovers and falling in love with each other's fiancé, which leaves a decidedly bitter aftertaste to the 'happy-ever-after' final scene, for all Mozart's wonderful music. In the libretto the two women swap back to their original partners, but modern directors have found ingenious ways to deal with the tricky ending, sometimes having the women swap partners yet again.
Il turco in Italia by Gioachino Rossini (1814)
Rossini's light-hearted comedy Il turco in Italia is as bright and breezy as they come, but this operatic candyfloss is still spiced with some of life's darker elements. Shortly after the start of the opera we meet Zaida, who has had to flee her dashing lover Selim and life she led in a Turkish harem because of death threats from jealous rivals. Then there's the unhappy marriage of Geronio and his much younger, fickle wife Fiorilla, whose eyes seem to rove to every many she meets. Even Rossini's famously labyrinthine plot twists don't quite manage to leave everyone happy: it's only right at the last minute, and after Fiorilla has lost much of her joie de vivre, that the couples are (at least temporarily!) happily reunited.
Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi (1893)
Verdi's larger-than-life drunken knight, taken from Shakespeare's Henry IV parts I and II and The Merry Wives of Windsor, is a comic delight – he chases after young women, runs up a huge bill at the Garter Inn and is tipped into the Thames from a laundry basket. But, as in Shakespeare's original, Falstaff is as much an object of ridicule and pity as he is the bringer of laughter. In Verdi's opera, Act III in particular has a vein of darkness running through it, from Falstaff's opening aria bemoaning the wickedness of the world ('Mondo ladro' – 'Thieving world!') to the scene in Windsor Great Park in which the followers of a fake 'Queen of the Fairies' pinch and punch the portly knight before the final fugue concludes 'Tutto nel mondo è burla! ('All the world's a joke!').
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny by Kurt Weill (1930)
This unique opera is the largest work to spring from the iconic partnership of Weill and dramatist Bertolt Brecht. When the opera opens, Fatty the 'attorney', Trinity Moses and Leokadja Begbick are on the run from the authorities for a clutch of crimes. They decide to found a new city dedicated to pleasure, greed and excess. Weill found inspiration in jazz and cabaret music but also - more unexpectedly - in Mozart's The Magic Flute, with its mix of comedy and tragedy, and speech with singing. The opera is bitingly satirical and uses the darkest of black humour to hammer home its critique of the excesses of capitalism. But, as always with Weill and Brecht, they put on a top-class show while making their political point.
Anna Nicole by Mark-Anthony Turnage (2011)
Mark-Anthony Turnage's controversial opera, a Royal Opera House commission and revived for the first time in September 2014, takes the story of model, ex-stripper and film star Anna Nicole Smith and charts her meteoric rise (and fall) from single mother and supermarket worker to household name and widow of an octogenarian billionaire. Turnage himself has said 'three-quarters of the piece is comic' and throughout the work Richard Thomas's deeply acerbic libretto mines comedy from the bleakest situations – Smith's first job in a fried chicken restaurant, her decision to pay for breast enlargement, the arrival on the scene of her husband-to-be in the strip club where Smith works and his sudden death at one of Anna's wild parties. It's only in the second half of the opera that the comedy gives way to an ever-growing sense of tragedy.
Anna Nicole runs from 11–24 September 2014. Tickets are still available.
The first performance is a student-only production with tickets priced £1–£25. Find out more about ROH Students.
ROH Students is generously made possible by the Bunting Family and Simon Robey.
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny runs 11 March–4 April 2015. Tickets open for general sale on 27 January 2015.
Il turco in Italia runs 11–27 April 2015. Tickets open for general sale on 27 January 2015.
Falstaff runs 6–18 July 2015. Tickets open for general sale on 31 March 2015.
Inevitably it's the extreme side of Anna Nicole Smith that first comes to mind: blonde, busty, noisy, vulgar, provocative, controversial. But engaging drama demands more than flamboyance and the hypnotic draw of prurience. A poignant moment in the second act of the opera Anna Nicole, distills the emotional essence of an altogether more tragic life. This is the very short solo sung by her son Daniel – a minute and a half of concentrated impact, just ten minutes before the opera's finish.
The music is gentle and even. The orchestral sound is sparse, with strings and celesta, a steady cymbal rhythm and underpinning bass. Add the jazz inflections of the orchestral riff and an easy, rocking rhythm, and the effect is of a bluesy lullaby. Over this, Daniel sings a dreamy vocal line with an improvisational feel. The sound alone is easy listening, shot through with the popular music inflections of Mark-Anthony Turnage's style: well suited to this modern American tragedy. But in the dramatic context it is far from easy, for Daniel is dead.
Daniel is in one chair, in a body bag. His mother sits in a chair next to him, devastated with grief. What he sings is a list of mood- and mind-altering substances (some legal, some not), including Zoloft, Lexapro and methadone. It is thought that it was from a combination of these three that Daniel Wayne Smith, born on 22 January 1986, died in the hospital room of Anna Nicole Smith on 10 September 2006. He was visiting his mother, who was in hospital in Nassau after giving birth to a daughter Dannielyn three days before. He was 20.
Appalling enough as a true story. But Anna Nicole the dramatic work introduces changes and inventions of characters and events that further heighten the human themes beneath, which is where the impact of Daniel's 'drug ballad' (as the libretto calls it) comes to the fore. Daniel (often called Danny) has been a presence in the opera from Act I: his birth is part of the scene showing Anna Nicole in her home town of Mexia, Texas, married to a fellow worker at a fried chicken restaurant. (This was six years before her second marriage, to the oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II: she was 26, he was 89.)
Episodes in the opera show Danny growing up in his mother's increasingly strange world. His brief appearance in the Act II party scene emphasizes the unsuitability of Anna's environment for a young child. As he gets older, he becomes one of the few stable points in his mother's life. She is constantly protective of him; he is a source of reassurance to her (as in the tense dressing room scene in Act II before an interview on the Larry King Show). Through all this Daniel is seen, but not heard. The only time in the opera he is given a voice of his own is after he has died.
Even more striking is the emotional impact of this one very brief number. It comes after a loud orchestral outburst that portrays Anna Nicole's deep pain at the death of her son; the contrast with the ballad's calm is striking. The real-life Howard K. Stern, Anna Nicole Smith's lawyer-publicist-partner, said after her death that 'Anna and Daniel were inseparable. Daniel was without question the most important person in Anna's life'.
In the opera, Daniel's body is removed from the stage as he sings his final phrase. Anna Nicole in response sings of her own fear that 'Danny's so scared. He's waiting for me. He doesn't know how to get to the other side'. This is derived from the last interview, tearful and distressed, that Anna Nicole Smith gave before her own death on 8 February 2007. In the opera, Daniel's seductive voice from the afterlife is a siren song for Anna Nicole. Her final aria begins with the lines 'Tired now, Danny, Mama's nearly there. Nothing left for me'.
Anna Nicole runs 11–24 September 2014. Tickets are still available. The first performance is available exclusively to members of the ROH Students scheme with tickets priced £1–£25. Find out how you can join ROH Students.The scheme is generously made possible by the Bunting Family and Simon Robey.]]>
In 1763, David Garrick shook up the theatre world by banning audience members from sitting onstage at Drury Lane.
Since the theatres had re-opened in 1660 (after the Restoration), it had become common practice to pay a few extra pennies for the privilege of sitting on the stage. A century earlier, audiences at The Globe were also often as concerned with being seen themselves as with watching the play – as one contemporary diarist, Thomas Platter, put it, 'Anyone who remains on the level standing pays only one English penny; but if he wants to sit, he is let in at a farther door, and there he gives another penny. If he desires to sit… where he not only sees everything well, but can also be seen then he gives yet another English penny.'
From the earliest staged performances, audience-watching has played a huge part. So it's no surprise that the idea of people watching people watching a performance has seeped into theatre and opera, in the form of the play-within-a-play.
Perhaps the most famous example is Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, whose 'rude mechanicals' provide much of the comedy with their 'most lamentable comedy and most cruel death of Pyramus and Thisbe'. Taking his cue from Shakespeare, Purcell incorporates a masque into his A Midsummer Night's Dream-inspired The Fairy Queen. Rather than a comic interlude courtesy of Bottom and co., however, Purcell conjures the god Phoebus to oversee a masque celebrating the four seasons. Almost three centuries later, Shakespeare's play-within-a-play becomes an opera-within-an-opera in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream, in a scene where the composer sends up both the actors' misguided dramatic intentions and 19th-century opera in one fell swoop.
In both Strauss's Salome and Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, a show-within-the-show proves to be a turning point. In Salome, we watch Herod voyeuristically enjoying Salome's 'Dance of the Seven Veils' after his ill-advised promise to give her whatever she wants in return. Wagner's opera, meanwhile, comes to a head with a singing competition between Nuremberg's Guild of Mastersingers – with a rather happier ending than the singing competition in his earlier opera Tannhäuser.
Some works, though, take the idea further and explicitly frame the entire work as an opera-within-an-opera, unsettling the 'real' audience's sense of reality. Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos is one such opera.
Originally written as a stand-alone divertissement to be performed after Molière's Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, Ariadne auf Naxos was later re-worked, with a Prologue added to create the opera that is performed today. In the Prologue, Strauss introduces us to the composer, a music master, a wig-maker, some comedians and a prima donna diva. We see the comic and chaotic preparations for the evening's entertainment – and then become the audience for the performance itself.
To completely different effect, Berg opens Lulu with a Prologue in which a circus ringmaster addresses the audience and introduces his menagerie – the prize of which is the 'snake' Lulu. Like Ariadne, though, the effect is to add another audience layer (or 'diegetic level'), and to frame the rest of the opera as a performance. The palindromic film that comes half-way through the opera takes us another step deeper.
More recently, composers and directors have adapted this stage tradition to include television-shows-within-operas, to the same effect: think of Anna's appearance on 'Larry King Live' in Turnage's Anna Nicole and Jonathan Kent's recent staging of Puccini's Manon Lescaut, in which Manon dances for both a live audience onstage and a fleet of television cameras.
Composers, librettists and playwrights continue to be fascinated by our love of spectacle. And in the very best examples these make us question our assumptions about reality itself. When you're watching an opera-within-an-opera, as Orwell didn't quite say, you look from actors to audience, and from audience to actors again, but sometimes it's impossible to say which is which.
Ariadne auf Naxos runs until 13 July 2014. Tickets are still available. The production is given with generous philanthropic support from Hélène and Jean Peters, Hamish and Sophie Forsyth and The Maestro's Circle.
Antonio Pappano conducts the cast and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in concert at the Symphony Hall, Birmingham, on 6 July 2014. Tickets are still available.]]>
Mark-Anthony Turnage's opera Anna Nicole returns to Covent Garden in Autumn 2014, offering audiences another chance to see the composer's operatic take on modern celebrity culture.
'Its an easily dismissable subject but I seem to be attracted to subjects like these because when you explore them you find gems on the way - comedic gems and some universal truths. It's an irresistible story,' says librettist Richard Thomas, who previously co-created Jerry Springer: The Opera. If we've done it right, then we've done a lot of justice to her life.'
'It's a mirror for our society - giving up your privacy and this greed for photos of celebrities, says soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek,' who returns to sing the title role in the 2014/15 Season. 'It shows us that it's very inhuman and horrible.'
'I did a lot of research about Anna as a person,' says Eva-Maria, who returns to sing the title role in the 2014/15 Season. 'The more we saw of her, the more I fell in love with her. She was a lovely girl, especially in the beginning. There are interviews with her and she was so wonderful, attractive, happy and radiant. It felt like a huge risk to take to portray a woman like her.'
Musically, the opera draws on the music of composer Mark-Anthony Turnage's youth:
'I've worked a lot in America and from my early twenties I was a great jazz and soul fan, so a lot of American music has been very much part of my life,' he says. 'It's not just pop and soul - it's also TV music. I realized when I talked to Tony Pappano that we both like Starsky and Hutch, Ironside and Mission: Impossible. In a funny kind of way they've stuck.'
Anna Nicole runs from 11-24 September 2014. General booking opens on 15 July 2014.]]>
One of the defining features of Puccini's musical settings is how he portrays the geographical settings for the stories of his operas. He was not the first to do this, nor the last, but Puccini's works are notably well-travelled. The scores' set descriptions themselves make the point – for example:
Puccini's aim was to create a realistic world on stage that included the specific locale of the drama, so he included in his music sounds that give this sense of a real place. One of the most famous is the opening of Act III of Tosca. The final part of the story takes place on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome, just before dawn. The points of starlight in a black sky provoke condemned hero Cavaradossi to recall a romantic night spent with Tosca – this is the famous aria 'E lucevan le stelle'. Paul Brown's designs for Jonathan Kent's Royal Opera production re-create the scene beautifully, but Puccini provided the lead through the music.
The opening creates the sense of quiet over a sleeping city: a shepherd leads his flock out to graze – we don't see him, but hear his song and the ringing of the sheep's bells, and then the church bells start to chime the call to matins. It is a lovely evocation of peace and calm, a world on the brink of awakening. This was one of the first sections of the opera that Puccini began composing, and indicates his desire to get an accurate sense of place right at the start of his work on the music. He had visited Rome and had local help to notate the sound of the Roman bells so that he could include the pitch and rhythm of their tolling into the music with some precision. It's detail like this that makes the atmosphere so convincing.
It was harder to draw on such literal sounds for the landscape of the American West of the Gold Rush. But Puccini's ear for colour and texture brilliantly conjure up that sense of the sublime that was captured in the art of the American Hudson River School, with painters such as Thomas Cole, Frederic Church and Albert Bierstadt: the majestic power and scale of nature untamed in a barely explored New World.
The short orchestral prelude that begins La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West) uses sweeping chords, tremolo strings and big changes of dynamics to evoke with the orchestra the idea of huge spaces subject to the elements, the wind through great redwoods, the swaying of their branches (a wind machine is used later in the opera to convey such a soundscape literally).
The last act of Manon Lescaut opens with an equally haunting, if more contracted, effect of expansive chords to represent the wide barren expanse outside New Orleans (geographical licence is part of opera!) in which Manon will perish.
Puccini's time allowed him to bring the pictorial quality of 19th-century Romantic music into opera with a purpose beyond the decorative. Puccini wanted to make you feel as though you were there, alongside the characters in the story. His music evokes the power of their emotions, but it also brings alive the landscapes in which they live and die.
Manon Lescaut runs from 17 June to 7 July 2014. A limited number of tickets are still available.
There will be a live cinema relay of the production on 24 June 2014. Find a showing near you.
Find out more about Puccini's use of local colour in John Snelson's article in the Manon Lescaut Digital Guide
Tosca runs from 10 May to 26 June 2014. Tickets are still available.]]>
The recently-announced 2014/15 Royal Opera Season will celebrate Antonio Pappano, the Company's Music Director.
Antonio will conduct six opera productions during the Season – Anna Nicole, I due Foscari, Tristan und Isolde, Andrea Chénier, Król Roger, and Guillaume Tell. 'We're celebrating Tony's versatility – how he can conduct operas from different periods, across a range of styles and make them all sound like they're his speciality', says Director of Opera Kasper Holten.
As well as the performances, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House is giving a symphonic concert, something Kasper hopes will become an annual tradition.
Born in London, Antonio Pappano's love of opera and theatre was sparked when he worked as a répétiteur at New York City Opera, in his early twenties. He subsequently worked at Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, Frankfurt Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and the Bayreuth Festival, where he was assistant to Daniel Barenboim. Antonio made his conducting debut in Oslo in 1987 and his Covent Garden debut three years later before being appointed Music Director of the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels at the age of 32. He took up his current post with The Royal Opera in 2002 and has since conducted an extensive range of productions from Mozart to Berg, as well as the world premieres of Birtwistle's The Minotaur in 2008 and Turnage's Anna Nicole in 2011.
See more details of the 2014/15 Royal Opera Season, including dates and casting.]]>
Booking dates
All the booking dates below open at 10am.
Royal Opera House 2014-15 Autumn Season Seating Plan and Ticket Prices (PDF 325KB)
Purchasing tickets as part of a Package will offer the best seat availability and a saving of up to 33%. Find out more about advance booking packages.
Ballet and Dance
Deloitte Ignite 2014
5-28 September
Free opening festival curated by The Royal Ballet and Minna Moore Ede.
BalletBoyz the TALENT (Linbury Studio Theatre)
16–27 September
Former Royal Ballet dancers Michael Nunn and William Trevitt and their award-winning troupe come to the Linbury Studio Theatre for the first time, with an all-new programme.
26 September–1 November; Live cinema relay on 16 October
By Kenneth MacMillan
Kenneth MacMillan's acclaimed tragic ballet is a modern masterpiece.
Scènes de ballet / Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan / Symphonic Variations / A Month in the Country
18 October–12 November
By Frederick Ashton
The Royal Ballet celebrates its Founder Choreographer, Frederick Ashton, with a mixed programme of some of his finest works.
Ceremony of Innocence / The Age of Anxiety / Aeternum
7–17 November
By Kim Brandstrup / NEW Liam Scarlett / Christopher Wheeldon
A Scarlett world premiere and two recent works by Brandstrup and Wheeldon: contemporary ballet at its finest.
Cassandra NEW (Linbury Studio Theatre)
30 October–1 November
By Ludovic Ondiviela
Choreographer Ludovic Ondiviela and singer songwriter Ana Silvera present a poignant exploration of what it is to be called mad.
Mapping / Document / Christopher Bruce (Linbury Studio Theatre)
25 –9 November
By Darshan Singh Bhuller / Ivgi & Greben / NEW Christopher Bruce
Phoenix Dance Theatre presents a mixed programme including a Christopher Bruce premiere and works by Darshan Singh Bhuller and the choreographic duo Ivgi & Grebem.
Don Quixote
25 November–22 January
By Carlos Acosta after Marius Petipa
Carlos Acosta's exuberant production of this classic tale of friendship, love and loyalty is bursting with joie de vivre.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
6 December 2014–16 January 2015; Live cinema relay on 16 December
Welcome Performance for Families 6 December
By Christopher Wheeldon
Follow Alice down the rabbit hole in Christopher Wheeldon's thrillingly entertaining ballet.
The Mad Hatter's Tea Party NEW (Linbury Studio Theatre)
6 December 2014–3 January 2015
ZooNation burst onto the stage with their family Christmas show, a wonderfully wacky take on the madcap characters of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Opera and Music
Anna Nicole
11–24 September
Mark-Anthony Turnage
Dir: Richard Jones
Cond: Antonio Pappano
A tale of sex, celebrity and scandal: Mark-Anthony Turnage's opera explores the dramatic life and death of Anna Nicole Smith.
12 September–6 October; BP Big Screen Live Relay on 17 September
Giuseppe Verdi
Dir: David McVicar
Cond: Maurizio Benini / Paul Griffiths
Corruption and innocence collide in Verdi's remarkable opera. David McVicar's staging emphasizes the depravity at the heart of the court of Mantua.
Il barbiere di Siviglia
19 September–5 October
Gioachino Rossini
Dir: Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier
Cond: Mark Elder
Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier's production of Rossini's sparkling comedy is full of wit and energy.
The Trial NEW (Linbury Studio Theatre)
10–18 October
Philip Glass
Lib: Christopher Hampton
Dir: Michael McCarthy
Cond: Michael Rafferty
Philip Glass, one of the world's most popular contemporary composers, creates a new work for Music Theatre Wales based on Kafka's nightmarish novel.
La scala di seta (Linbury Studio Theatre)
23–4 October
Gioachino Rossini
Dir: Greg Eldridge §
Cond: Jonathan Santagada §
The Jette Parker Young Artists present a fully staged performance in the Linbury Studio Theatre, in one of the most popular highlights of Meet the Young Artists Week.
§ Jette Parker Young Artist
I due Foscari NEW
14 October–2 November; Live cinema relay on 27 October
Giuseppe Verdi
Dir: Thaddeus Strassberger
Cond: Antonio Pappano / Renato Balsadonna
A despairing father is torn between love for his family and duty to a corrupt city in Verdi's searing early tragedy.
Idomeneo NEW
3–24 November
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Dir: Martin Kušej
Cond: Marc Minkowski
Love and sacrifice vie in Mozart's sublime early masterpiece, directed by Martin Kušej in his UK debut.
Glare NEW (Linbury Studio Theatre)
Søren Nils Eichberg
Lib: Hannah Dübgen
Dir: Thaddeus Strassberger
Cond: Geoffrey Paterson
Danish-German composer Søren Nils Eichberg presents a taut thriller about trust and reality.
L'elisir d'amore
18 November–13 December; Live cinema relay on 26 November
Gaetano Donizetti
Dir: Laurent Pelly
Cond: Daniele Rustioni
Laurent Pelly's acclaimed production of Donizetti's opera radiates tenderness, humour and southern sunshine.
Orfeo NEW (Roundhouse, Camden)
13–24 January 2015
Claudio Monteverdi
Dir: Michael Boyd / Trans: Don Paterson
Cond: Christian Curnyn
Live opera is as much about enjoying the visual spectacle as listening. But some of the most striking effects in opera can come when composers place a singer offstage, so that we experience their presence through sound alone.
The offstage voice is used to magical effect in Act III of Verdi's Don Carlo. King Philip II has just ordered his son Carlos to be imprisoned, and commanded a grisly auto-da-fé (burning of heretics) to begin. As the crowd alternately acclaim him or lament, a single soaring soprano voice is heard, promising God's forgiveness – a ray of light in a bleak scene (from 3:50 in the extract below).
Verdi wasn't the only composer to use an offstage voice to offer celestial hope, however. Other radiant examples include the heavenly chorus who praise the Virgin Mary at the end of Puccini's Suor Angelica as the dying Angelica is reunited with her son, the choir of angels who pronounce salvation for Marguerite in Act V of Gounod's Faust, and the angels who come to the aid of Faust in the final scene of Boito's Mefistofele.
The effect of an offstage voice can convey a powerful sense of divine majesty. Is there anything more impressive than the bass Voice of Neptune in Mozart's Idomeneo, when the god commands Idomeneo to save his son? Our sense of awe is amplified by the fact he's heard but not seen. Prophets too are often rendered more impressive from being heard offstage. When we first see Jokanaan (John the Baptist) in Strauss's Salome, he is a wretched, dishevelled prisoner. But his powerful dignity is unequivocally stated when, at the opening of the opera, his voice booms from his cell, prophesying the coming of the Messiah.
Offstage voices can be as sinister as they can be consoling and awe-inspiring. The threatening cries of the unseen crowd as Grimes wanders the shore in Act III scene 2 of Peter Grimes instil a sense of menace. Verdi and Janáček both use offstage voices to eerie effect in the storm scene of Rigoletto and extensively throughout Kát'a Kabanová (where in fact the chorus only sing onstage once in the entire opera), the fragmented voices mirroring the heroine's gradual mental disintegration.
Puccini in particular understood the power of the offstage voice to create strong character impressions and he introduces three of his heroines – Mimì (La bohème), Tosca (Tosca) and Cio-Cio-San (Madama Butterfly) – through their voices alone. Before we've seen them, their music and vocal qualities tell us a lot: Mimì is gentle and shy, Tosca impetuous and ardent and Cio-Cio-San is a romantic dreamer. Even before they come on stage we are eager to learn more about them.
Richard Strauss uses offstage voices to particularly magnificent effect in Die Frau ohne Schatten. Throughout Acts I and II of the opera the Voice of the Falcon chillingly cries (to the rhythm of birdcalls): 'The woman bears no shadow, the Emperor must turn to stone'. In Act I the Voices of the Unborn Children make a heartbreaking lament as Barak's Wife determines to enter the Nurse's demonic pact, and later in the Act the voices of the Nightwatchmen who praise conjugal love move us to pity for the lonely Barak.
Offstage voices create sinister effects in the spirit realm of Act III – particularly the seductive soprano voice of the Guardian of the Threshold, who tempts the Empress to steal Barak's Wife's shadow. The Empress courageously resists – and the magical effect of the opera's jubilant ending is enhanced by the Voices of the Unborn Children, who serenely reassure their parents that happy days are ahead. Of the many elements that make Die Frau ohne Schatten a great opera, the power of the offstage voice is undoubtedly a crucial one.
Die Frau ohne Schatten runs from 14 March–2 April 2014. Tickets are still available.
Faust runs from 4–25 April 2014. Tickets are sold out, but returns may become available and there will be 67 day tickets available for each performance.
Tosca runs 10 May–26 June 2014. Tickets are still available.]]>
They challenge established morals, they champion pleasure and they insist on living life on their own terms. A large number of them meet unhappy ends. But they are among the most famous and best loved of operatic characters. What is it about the 'bad girls' of opera that we find so appealing?
Violetta Valéry, La traviata
When we first meet Verdi's Violetta, she is a courtesan – a woman who earns her living giving pleasure to men. She is extremely good at her job. But Verdi also depicts her as a self-aware woman with an immense capacity for love. We are moved as we watch Violetta's progression from the light-hearted coquette of Act I, who declares in 'Sempre libera' that she wants to live entirely for pleasure, to the generous, self-sacrificing woman prepared to give up her love Alfredo for the good of his family. And Violetta's dignity and kindness in Act III as she prepares for death is extremely moving, as she prays to God to help her ('Addio del passato') and then consoles Alfredo and his father.
Carmen, Carmen
Carmen certainly has dubious morals: she's a smuggler, who enjoys having power over men. She persuades Don José to desert from the army for her, only to reject him a few months later. But Bizet also makes Carmen very compelling. She has a wonderful joie de vivre and sensuality, which we see and hear in her Act I Habanera and Seguidille, and in the exuberant Act II Danse Bohemienne. She never lies to Don José, or anyone else, about her feelings. She is brave, and stoically accepts her fate in her Act III aria En vain pour éviter when she reads her death in the cards. Even when Don José confronts her in Act IV and threatens to kill her she refuses to be intimidated, telling him that 'Carmen will never give in. Free she was born, and free she will die!'. And she does.
Manon, Manon
Massenet's Manon is a 'good time girl', who abandons her lover Des Grieux for the wealthy De Brétigny, gloats at her power over men, then lures Des Grieux away from his training as a priest and cajoles him into becoming a gambler. And yet, Massenet gives Manon such meltingly beautiful music that we can't judge her too harshly. Her Act I aria 'Je suis encore tout étourdie' and her exuberant Act III scene 1 Gavotte depict her as an innocent, largely unaware of the damage she is doing. Her nostalgic Act II aria 'Adieu, notre petite table' shows that she is genuinely torn between her love for Des Grieux and her love of riches. And in Act V, Manon finally realizes the depth of her feelings for Des Grieux. She begs him to forgive her, and, to exultant music, sings of her devotion to him. Manon may behave badly, but she is a woman with a great resource of love.
Anna Nicole, Anna Nicole
Blonde ex-stripper Anna Nicole sets out to manipulate the media and men. She marries an octogenarian billionaire for financial security, and embarks on a career of extensive self-publicity, determined to 'rape that goddamn American dream'. And yet at the same time Mark-Anthony Turnage and Richard Thomas portray Anna as something of a cheerful innocent, who falls prey to the media and to such unscrupulous men as the Lawyer Stern. They also movingly depict her tenderness for her aged husband, particularly in his death scene, and for her son. Anna mourns her son's death with the opera's most beautiful aria, and her loss ultimately destroys her.
Carmen runs from 16 December 2013 to 9 January 2014. Tickets are sold out though returns may become available. A limited number of day tickets will be available on the day of performance.
Manon runs from 14 January to 4 February 2014. Tickets are still available.
La traviata runs from 19 April to 20 May 2014. Tickets go on sale to Friends of Covent Garden on 11 December 2013, and on General sale on 14 January 2014.]]>
Richard Jones's Royal Opera production of Benjamin Britten's Gloriana is now available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray from the Royal Opera House Online Shop.
The opera was originally commissioned to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 and Richard Jones's new production, which opened at the Royal Opera House last Season, marked both the Britten Centenary and sixty years since the opera's premiere. Read audience reactions to the production.
Toby Spence sings the role of the dashing but treacherous Earl of Essex, a character he describes as 'adorable but impossible', while Susan Bullock sings the role of Elizabeth I, who she considers to be the 'lion-hearted heroine'. Watch interviews with the principal singers.
Toby Spence as the Earl of Essex and Mark Stone as Lord Mountjoy in Gloriana © ROH / Clive Barda 2013
Susan Bullock as Queen Elizabeth I, Lake Laoutaris-Smith as Time and Guilia Pazzaglia as Concord in Gloriana © ROH / Clive Barda 2013
Susan Bullock as Queen Elizabeth I, Toby Spence as the Earl of Essex and Mark Stone as Lord Mountjoy in Gloriana © ROH / Clive Barda 2013
Toby Spence as the Earl of Essex, Mark Stone as Lord Mountjoy and Kate Royal as Lady Rich in Gloriana © ROH / Clive Barda 2013
Susan Bullock as Queen Elizabeth I and Jeremy Carpenter as Robert Cecil in Gloriana © ROH / Clive Barda 2013
Toby Spence as the Earl of Essex and Susan Bullock as Queen Elizabeth I in Gloriana © ROH / Clive Barda 2013
Kate Royal as Lady Rich, Toby Spence as the Earl of Essex. Patricia Bardon as the Countess of Essex and Mark Stone as Lord Mountjoy in Gloriana © ROH / Clive Barda 2013
The performance, which was recorded live at the Royal Opera House in June 2013, also features performances from Kate Royal as Lady Rich, Patricia Bardon as Countess of Essex and Mark Stone as Lord Mountjoy. Paul Daniels conducts.
The opera, which is based on Lytton Strachey's biography Elizabeth and Essex, explores the turbulent relationship between the Queen and her favourite and depicts the conflict between affairs of the state and affairs of the heart. Find out more in our Opera Essentials series.
Those who enjoyed Gloriana may also enjoy the National Portrait Gallery's Elizabeth I & Her People exhibition.
Gloriana is just one of an extensive range of DVD and Blu-ray releases available from the ROH Shop.]]>
British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage was initially wary of opera. In spite of an evident gift for evoking vivid drama in his music – as demonstrated in his 1983 early work Lament for a Hanging Man – he had been put off the genre by concerns that many operatic subjects seemed distant from modern life. However, Hans Werne Henze encouraged him to try his hand and Turnage's first foray into opera, Greek, was given a triumphant premiere at the 1988 Munich Biennale. Unafraid to take risks and eager to engage with the reality of modern life, the composer quickly established an international reputation as a daring and much-admired 'operatic enfant terrible' (as dubbed by the Telegraph).
The libretto for Greek was adapted by Turnage and Jonathan Moore from a play by Steven Berkoff, itself a contemporary reworking of the Oedipus myth. Setting the story in 1980s East London, the composer draws on the power of ancient myth in a modern setting to examine racism, greed, AIDS and unemployment. The score incorporates an audacious blend of musical influences – from Benjamin Britten to Turnage's hero Miles Davis, and even football chants. All evoke the urban angst of Berkoff's drama and cut through with moments of lyrical tenderness.
In the years following Greek Turnage spent time concentrating on his orchestral output and developing his unique musical language, producing works such as his highly acclaimed Blood on the Floor, which saw its first complete performance in 1996. The 50th anniversary of the Aldeburgh festival in 1997 saw the premieres of his next compositions for the stage: Twice Through the Heart, a dramatic scena for mezzo-soprano; and The Country of the Blind, a chamber opera. Between them, these hard-hitting works include moments of wonderful expression – such as the beautiful love duet in The Country of the Blind – as well as exhibiting Turnage's now signature synthesis of jazz with elements of modernism, and his propulsive rhythmic energy.
Commissioned by English National Opera, The Silver Tassie premiered in 2000 and confirmed Turnage's mastery of the genre. Amanda Holden's libretto is based on a play by Sean O'Casey and explores the impact of World War I on a Dublin family. The opera's four acts follow the form of a traditional symphony, where the composer draws together the powerfully acerbic qualities of Greek with the expressivity of his intervening work. Turnage also infuses the opera with traditional melodies and memorable motifs, and gives each character a subtle and developed musical identity.
Anna Nicole is Turnage's boldest opera to date. Commissioned by The Royal Opera and first performed in 2011, its portrayal of the dramatic life and death of the Playboy model and celebrity Anna Nicole Smith generated a huge media buzz even before the opening night. In a consciously lighter vein than Turnage's earlier operas, the work's fabulously vulgar libretto by Jerry Springer: The Opera co-creator Richard Thomas is paired with a typically eclectic score. With trademark tinges of jazz and blues skillfully combined with influences from a plethora of 20th-century masters (amongst them Stravinsky and Janáček), this 'musically rich, audacious and inexplicably poignant work' has become a classic of our time.
Greek runs from 21 – 26 October. Tickets are still available.]]>
The DVD/Blu-Ray release of Richard Jones's Royal Opera production of Puccini's Il trittico has won a prestigious Gramophone award in the opera category, courtesy of a public vote.
The Olivier-nominated production features a triptych of three one-act operas - Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. It stars Eva-Maria Westbroek, Aleksandrs Antonenko, Lucio Gallo, Ekaterina Siurina and Ermonela Jaho and was described by Gramophone magazine as being 'a high point for live opera on DVD'.
Other winners this year include John Eliot Gardiner (in the Baroque Vocal category for Bach's Motets with the Monteverdi Choir), Mark Elder (in the Choral category for Elgar's The Apostles with the Hallé Orchestra) and Jonas Kaufmann (in the Vocal category for a collection of Wagner Arias with the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper). These artists will all appear at Covent Garden during the 2013/14 Season in Le nozze di Figaro, Wozzeck and Manon Lescaut respectively.
One of the 11 winners will be revealed as the recording of the year at a ceremony at LSO St Luke's on 17 September.
Il trittico is available to buy from the ROH Shop.]]>
Benjamin Britten's Gloriana starring Susan Bullock and Toby Spence will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 at 6.45pm this Saturday (29 June).
The story and its origins
The opera, which was commissioned to celebrate the coronation of the Queen in 1953, is based on Lytton Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex and depicts the public and private trials of Elizabeth I at the end of her reign. Find out more about the story with our Opera Essentials guide, and take a look at politically-themed operas.
Gloriana was written, like many of Britten's operas, in Aldeburgh. Watch Susan Bullock and Britten biographer John Bridcut on the coastal town that inspired Britten.
View rehearsal photos from the original 1953 production:
Joan Cross, Basil Coleman (producer) and Benjamin Britten during rehearsals for 'Gloriana' (1953) at Orme Square. ©1953 ROH / Roger Wood
Basil Coleman (producer), Benjamin Britten and Joan Cross during rehearsals for 'Gloriana' (1953) at Orme Square. ©1953 ROH / Roger Wood
Joan Cross, Basil Coleman (producer) and Benjamin Britten during rehearsals for 'Gloriana' (1953) at Orme Square. ©1953 ROH / Roger Wood
The opera is a famous example of depicting the monarchy on stage. Find out more about the history of royalty on stage, including a look at the historical role of the censor.
The staging and rehearsals
Richard Jones's production is set in 1953 and features a stage within a stage. Watch footage from rehearsals featuring conductor Paul Daniel working with the cast:
Review the show
Read audience reactions to the opening night and live cinema relay, and add your own review.
Gloriana runs until 6 July. Tickets are still available.
It will also be screened live in cinemas on 24 June, marking the close of the ROH live Cinema Season 2012/13. It will also be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 at 6.45pm on 29 June.
This production has been made possible thanks to the generous philanthropic support of the Britten-Pears Foundation, the Boltini Trust and Lindsay and Sarah Tomlinson.]]>
Benjamin Britten invigorated British music making like no other figure, and nowhere more so than in opera. Founded just a year after the premiere of Peter Grimes, the Covent Garden Opera Company (The Royal Opera from 1968) might have been an obvious ally but collaborations between the composer and Covent Garden were complex affairs and often fraught with in-fighting.
Britten's Royal Opera House debut was with Peter Grimes in 1947. The opera had already enjoyed phenomenal success from its first performance at Sadler's Wells on 7 June 1945 – but not without some personal cost. Though director and soprano Joan Cross adored the score, the company were not overjoyed to discover their first peacetime opera would be a new work by a 31-year-old conscientious objector. Add in the sotto voce rumours over Britten and Peter Pears's relationship and the result was a poisonous rehearsal atmosphere. Eventually Cross left the company under storm clouds and Peter Grimes was dropped from the Sadler's Wells repertory at Britten's explicit request. The subsequent 1947 Royal Opera House production was an on-stage success, but Britten had learnt to be wary.
Britten's first Royal Opera House commission, Billy Budd, was created for the 1951 Festival of Britain – though a troubled gestation meant that the opera missed the festival by several months. Britten and his librettist E.M. Forster collided over the depiction of Billy's nemesis Claggart and Forster's polite condescension soon turned into overt contempt. Pears remembered Forster talking to Britten 'as though he were an insolent servant'; Forster wrote 'I am rather a fierce old man at the moment, and he is rather a spoilt boy'. Despite mixed reviews Billy Budd established itself in the repertory, more thoroughly so when Britten revised the opera into two acts for a BBC broadcast in 1961, first performed on stage at the Royal Opera House in 1964.
In 1952 Britten accepted an unprecedented commission to mark the new Queen's coronation with a gala opera. Britten and his librettist William Plomer audaciously chose Lytton Strachey's ambivalent Elizabeth and Essex as their source – the result was Gloriana. At the opera's premiere on 8 June 1953 Cross and Pears sang the star roles to a gala gathering of royalty and political bigwigs. It was a catastrophe. The audience – not selected for their love of 20th-century music – railed against music 'as clamorous and ugly as hammers striking steel rails' and a subtext that they perceived insult to the Queen. But Richard Jones's production of this complex masterpiece is long overdue: aside from two performances by Opera North of Phyllida Lloyd's production in 1994, the opera has not been seen at the Royal Opera House since 1953.
Of Britten's ten subsequent stage works only two were for the Royal Opera House. Britten's sole ballet The Prince of the Pagodas, commissioned by John Cranko for Sadler's Wells Ballet, suffered when Cranko and Britten fell out, and despite Britten's radiant score the ballet was deemed a failure (Kenneth MacMillan considerably remedied its problems with a new scenario in his 1989 Royal Ballet production, revived last Season). The very last was Britten's television opera Owen Wingrave, broadcast in 1971 and staged in 1973 at the Royal Opera House – where it became obvious Britten had composed with a keen eye on its suitability for live performance.
No matter how tempestuous his operas' geneses, Britten's music tells a different story. Luminous and often heartbreaking his 100th anniversary is definitely worth celebrating.
Gloriana runs from until 6 July. Tickets are available now.
This production has been made possible thanks to the generous philanthropic support of the Britten-Pears Foundation, the Boltini Trust and Lindsay and Sarah Tomlinson.
Tickets for our 2013/14 Cinema Season are now on sale. The Season opens on 17 September with a live relay of The Royal Opera's Turandot.
The Royal Opera House Cinema Season is sponsored by the Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Gloriana runs from 20 June to 6 July. Tickets are available now.
It will also be screened live in cinemas on 24 June, marking the close of the ROH live Cinema Season 2012/13. It will also be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 at 6.45pm on 29 June.
This production has been made possible thanks to the generous philanthropic support of the Britten-Pears Foundation, the Boltini Trust and Lindsay and Sarah Tomlinson.]]>
Richard Jones's new production of Benjamin Britten's Gloriana opens tonight (20 June), marking the first time the opera has been staged at Covent Garden for 60 years.
The opera, which was commissioned in honour of the Queen's coronation in 1953, follows the turbulent relationship between Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Essex.
Toby Spence, who sings the role of Essex, describes how he has grappled to convey a character who is at once 'sensitive, emotional and frustrated'."
He is someone who is adorable but impossible, loveable and un-loveable all at the same time.
The opera, which is based on Lytton Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex, explores the tensions between the public and private life of the Queen. Find out more in our Opera Essentials series.
Susan Bullock sings the role of Queen Elizabeth I, whom she describes as a lion-hearted heroine.
To have this dilemma played out on stage, of the choice between public duty and her love and depth of feeling for Essex, shows a different side to what the history books delved into. We see quite a complex character on stage."
Gloriana runs from 20 June to 6 July. Tickets are available now.
It will also be screened live in cinemas on 24 June, marking the close of the ROH live Cinema Season 2012/13. It will also be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 at 6.45pm on 29 June.
This production has been made possible thanks to the generous philanthropic support of the Britten-Pears Foundation, the Boltini Trust and Lindsay and Sarah Tomlinson.
Opera began as a court entertainment. Wealthy nobility in the 17th and 18th centuries had their own theatres, composers, musicians and theatrical troupes to entertain them and their guests. So it's not surprising that there was a good degree of flattery on stage to reflect the status of the aristocrats who paid for it all. Baroque and Classical operas are full of scenarios in which rulers are challenged, angered and betrayed. But whatever happens in the course of the story, the monarch (mythological or historical) invariably ends the work through dispensing a bit of noble forgiveness.
This type of opera was part an education in how to exercise power and part a distancing technique ('any resemblance between those on stage and those in the audience is entirely coincidental'). It's a pattern to be seen in such a work as Handel's Tamerlano, and with Mozart's La Clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus) the title gives it away! Even presenting Queen Elizabeth I in an opera written for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II – as Gloriana does – has loud echoes of this.
We can easily forget today how powerful and suggestive stage works could be. Gloriana's Act III is about the rebellious uprising led by the Earl of Essex. The uprising's failure results in Essex's execution on the orders of Queen Elizabeth I. It is a matter of fact that on the night before this historical event of 8 February 1601 a performance of Shakespeare's Richard II was given at The Globe theatre by The Lord Chamberlain's Men, for whom Shakespeare wrote. This was a change from the planned play – the actors were paid 40 shillings by the leading aristocratic supporters of Essex's uprising. Significantly, it is a play about a weak king with no direct heir whose throne is usurped for the good of the country. In Elizabethan times, theatres provided one of the few places crowds could legally assemble in large numbers, and in a situation where they could be incited to mob action by rhetoric from the stage. Theatres could be dangerously political places.
It's not surprising then that censorship of the stage became part of the government's role. And it wasn't just the potential for political incitement that caused concern, but increasingly anything that could corrupt public morals or offend individuals – especially the monarchy. By the early 1900s, censorship of British theatre routinely stopped any portrayal of living people or those whose immediate descendants were still living.
We are used now to seeing the present British royal family portrayed on film and stage – Helen Mirren has cornered today's market for Queen Elizabeth II. Yet around the time the current Queen was crowned, the Lord Chamberlain was regularly banning the presentation of Queen Victoria on stage, while any inclusion of the reigning monarch in a drama was unthinkable. The Lord Chamberlain's censorship continued right up to the abolition of his powers in 1968. One of the last plays to be banned from public performance featured Queen Victoria having a lesbian affair with Florence Nightingale. That play can now be performed legally of course, but it hasn't yet been turned into an opera…
What are your favourite depictions of royalty on stage?
More about the presentation of monarchy in drama can be read in the article 'We Three Queens' in the programme that accompanies Gloriana.
Gloriana runs from 20 June to 6 July. Tickets are available now.
It will also be screened live in cinemas on 24 June, and will be broadcast live by BBC Radio 3 at 6.45pm on 29 June.
This production has been made possible thanks to the generous philanthropic support of the Britten-Pears Foundation, the Boltini Trust and Lindsay and Sarah Tomlinson.
The Story Begins…
Queen Elizabeth I of England has become infatuated with the young Earl of Essex. Essex admires the Queen but is keen to exploit her feelings to gain power and status. When he becomes a danger to the state, Elizabeth is forced to choose between duty and her personal feelings for Essex.
The Past and the Present
The music of Gloriana skilfully balances Britten's own distinctive style with allusions to the music of the Tudor period. The world of the 16th century is vividly brought to live in the Choral and Court Dances, and in Essex's Lute Songs. There are also more experimental 'modern' sections, such as the final scene, in which the Queen drifts into a strange, timeless world, resigning herself to death.
A Psychological Drama
The libretto for Gloriana was written by the South African novelist, poet and editor William Plomer. Britten had met Plomer at the first Aldeburgh Festival and the pair became friends. The principal source for the story of Gloriana was Lytton Strachey's historical biography Elizabeth and Essex. Strachey brought his interest in Freudian psychology to his exploration of the Queen's relationship with her young favourite.
A Coronation Celebration
Gloriana was written to celebrate the Coronation of Elizabeth II, to whom the opera was dedicated. Although the first performance on 8 June 1953 (given to an audience including The Royal Family, courtiers, politicians and dignitaries) met with a mixed response, Gloriana went on to be a great box office success. It was revived for three performances in 1954 and also performed at Covent Garden by Opera North in 1994. Richard Jones's production is the first new staging of Gloriana by The Royal Opera since the opera's premiere.
Public and Private
The conflict between the public and the private aspects of Elizabeth and Essex is vividly dramatized in Gloriana. Grand scenes such as the masque at Norwich (Act II scene 1) and the dance at Whitehall (Act II scene 3) contrast with the intimacy of Essex's dialogues alone with the Queen, and then with the Queen's growing isolation in Act III as she is forced to make her terrible decision to execute Essex.
Gloriana runs from 20 June to 6 July. Tickets are available now.
It will also be screened live in cinemas on 24 June, and will be broadcast live by BBC Radio 3 at 6.45pm on 29 June.
This production has been made possible thanks to the generous philanthropic support of the Britten-Pears Foundation, the Boltini Trust and Lindsay and Sarah Tomlinson.
Today marks 60 years since Queen Elizabeth II's coronation. Following the death of King George VI, on 2 June 1953 the young princess was crowned in a ceremony at Westminster Abbey in front of more than 8,000 guests.
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Artists of The Royal Ballet, Golden Jubilee Gala 23 July 2002 © Rob Moore/ROH 2002
Sir Colin Southgate, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Monica Mason, Golden Jubilee Gala 23 July 2002 © Rob Moore/ROH 2002
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, HRH The Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh in the Royal Box, Golden Jubilee Gala 23 July 2002 © Rob Moore/ROH 2002
The Queen has been a regular visitor to the Royal Opera House over the years. She has attended numerous gala performances, and re-opened the Royal Opera House in 1999 following its three year closure for refurbishment.
Watch British Pathe footage documenting the Royal Family's 1960 visit to Covent Garden.
Her coronation in 1953 was marked by the premiere of Benjamin Britten's Gloriana, an opera commissioned in honour of the occasion.
Based on Lytton Strachey's Elizabeth and Essex, the opera depicts the public and private trials of Elizabeth I at the end of her reign. Find out more about the story in our political opera series.
To mark both the anniversary of the Queen's coronation and the centenary of Britten's birth, Richard Jones will direct a new production of the opera, bringing Gloriana to Covent Garden for the first time in six decades.
Renowned soprano Susan Bullock, who sang the role of Brünnhilde in The Ring Cycle earlier this season, will sing the role of Queen Elizabeth I.
'I'm fascinated by the two conflicted sides of Elizabeth I,' she said in an interview for Friends of Covent Garden Magazine. 'There's the private Elizabeth who wants to be in love like any woman, and there's the official Queen, who feels she has to behave like a man to be taken seriously. I have to find the voice of Elizabeth I; I've got to find out who this woman is.'
Gloriana runs from 20 June to 6 July. Tickets are available now. It will also be screened live in cinemas on 24 June, and will be broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 at 6.45pm on 29 June.
This production has been made possible thanks to the generous philanthropic support of the Britten-Pears Foundation, the Boltini Trust and Lindsay and Sarah Tomlinson.
Opera composers have long been fascinated by political situations – both of their own time and from history – for the simple reason that political tensions make great drama. With several operas in which politics loom large coming up at Covent Garden - in the first of a new series of features - we look at some explicitly 'political' operas:
Verdi:Don Carlo (1867, revised 1884 and 1886)
Politics and religion are two of the principal themes of Verdi's towering masterpiece Don Carlo, which explores the conflict between ideals, romantic desires and political choices. Elizabeth of Valois is forced to renounce her betrothed Don Carlos and marry his father in order to bring peace between France and Spain. Don Carlos is torn between his love for Elizabeth and his desire to heal the troubled Netherlands, held under a Spanish 'reign of terror'. His friend Rodrigo, the Marquis of Posa, has fostered Carlos's political ambitions and hopes to influence King Philip II to end the persecution in the Netherlands, and to encourage Philip to become a more merciful ruler. King Philip is moved by Posa's idealism and courage, but he himself is not a free man – as Act IV of the opera shows, Philip is very much under the thumb of the dreaded Grand Inquisitor (Duet: 'Il Grande Inquisitor!'). It is the Inquisitor who has the final say in this opera, forcing Philip to submit to his will and destroy Carlos and Posa. In Don Carlo, the characters' ideals are no match for the power of Church and State.
Verdi: Simon Boccanegra (1857, revised 1881)
Verdi was always keen to show that his politicians were also human beings. The personal and the public clash to devastating effect in Simon Boccanegra when the eponymous Doge of Genoa is reunited with his long-lost daughter Amelia after 25 years. Their happiness is threatened by Simon's political opponents – the aristocrats of Genoa (among them Amelia's lover Gabriele Adorno) and the Doge's own confidant Paolo. Paolo got Simon into power, and expects favours from the Doge in return – including the hand of Amelia. When Boccanegra refuses, Paolo tries to kidnap Amelia. The plot fails, and Boccanegra pronounces a curse on Amelia's kidnapper. In revenge, Paolo poisons Boccanegra and organizes a rebellion against him. The rebellion is unsuccessful, largely due to the heroism of Adorno, who becomes the Doge's ally when he learns that he is Amelia's father. But Paolo's poisoning plot works; the Doge dies at the hands of the wily man who got him into power in the first place. Simon proves himself a successful politician to the last, however, and with his dying breath brings peace to his city by naming Gabriele Adorno as the new Doge (Final ensemble: 'Gran Dio, li benedici').
Britten: Gloriana (1953)
Britten chose to explore the final days of an iconic British monarch in this commission to mark the coronation of Elizabeth II. Queen Elizabeth I is drawn to the dashing and impulsive Earl of Essex, who becomes one of her 'favourites'. Although she knows Essex is impetuous and overly ambitious, she allows him to persuade her to appoint him as military commander in Ireland. When he fails to conquer the rebels there and returns full of excuses and anger, Elizabeth (with some unease) is forced to listen to her advisors and place him under house arrest. Essex, enraged, leads an ill-fated rebellion, and the Queen has no option but to condemn him to death for treason. In a pensive epilogue, the Queen meditates on her reign and her approaching death; snatches of music in the orchestra telling us that her thoughts are still very much with Essex.
Don Carlo runs 4 - 25 May, Simon Boccanegra from 27 June - 16 July and Gloriana from 20 June - 6 July. Tickets are still available for Simon Boccanegra and Gloriana but Don Carlo is limited to Day Tickets and returns only.]]>
Director Basil Coleman, renowned for his collaborations with Benjamin Britten, died last week.
Basil produced the world premieres of Billy Budd and Gloriana at Covent Garden in 1951 and 1953 respectively. Away from opera, he directed for the theatrical stage as well as for television, including the BBC's series adaptation of Anna Karenina in the late 1970s.
Our thoughts are with his friends and family.
Photos courtesy of ROH Collections]]>
Royal Opera Music Director Antonio Pappano, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House and a number of Company-affiliated artists have been nominated for International Opera Awards.
This is the first year of the awards and, the only awards to focus exclusively on opera, it is hoped that they will become the Oscars of the opera world. Designed to promote excellence in opera, they recognize the achievements of performers, producers and backstage teams.
Music Director of The Royal Opera Antonio Pappano has been nominated in the Conducting category while the Royal Opera House Orchestra have been nominated in the Orchestra category.
Those nominated in the Male Singer category include Aleksandrs Antonenko, who will sing the role of Cavaradossi in Tosca this July; Jonas Kaufman who will sing the title role in Don Carlo; and Bryn Terfel who appeared in Keith Warner's production of The Ring Cycle earlier in the Season.
Joyce DiDonato, who will perform in John Fulljames's new production of La donna del lago; and Sarah Connolly, who performed in The Ring Cycle, are nominated in the Female Singer category.
Other nominees include Ryan Wigglesworth, who conducted Birtwistle's The Minotaur in Covent Garden earlier this year and is up for the Newcomer Award; Richard Jones, whose production of Britten's Gloriana opens in June has been nominated for the Director Award; and Nicola Luisotti, who will be conducting Verdi's Nabucco on the Main Stage in March and has been nominated for the Conductor Award alongside Antonio Pappano. Allan Clayton, who will perform in Written on Skin; and Sophie Bevan, who will sing Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, are nominated in the Young Singer category.
Watch Ryan Wigglesworth rehearsing for The Minotaur as part of our highlights from Royal Opera LIVE
In the DVD category, recordings of The Royal Opera performing both Richard Jones's production of Il trittico and Jonathan Kent's production of Tosca are both nominated. There is also a Reader's Award, which allows the public to vote for a singer of their choice. Cast your vote online
All other categories will be judged by an independent panel of industry experts, including John Allison, editor of Opera Magazine. He commented:
"Driven by the feeling that true excellence in opera is seldom celebrated enough, and that new and emerging artists need all the support they can get, The Operas (as we hope they will come to be known) will address both these needs while bringing together leading members of the 'industry' and its supporters."
The awards will be presented at a ceremony at the Hilton Park Lane on the 22 April 2013. View the full list of nominees.]]>
The DVD release of Richard Jones's Royal Opera production of Puccini's Il trittico has been nominated for a prestigious BBC Music Magazine Award, to be decided by public vote.
The Olivier-nominated production, features a triptych of emotionally panoramic one act operas - Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. The trio were first performed together on the same bill at Covent Garden in September 2011.
Of the DVD release, BBC Music Magazine said:
'We so rarely see Puccini's whole triptych: here are all three operas in vivid and memorable productions by Richard Jones. Suor Angelica, the most challenging, is genuinely moving rather than sentimental with Ermonela Jaho powerful as Angelica; Il tabarro is a dramatic whirlwind with Eva-Maria Westbroek a convincing Giorgetta and Lucio Gallo blazing ferociously as Michele. He returns for a deliriously funny 1950s Gianni Schicchi.'
Those voting online before the closing date of 28 February 2013 will be entered into a draw to win prizes including a top of the range audio player and all of the nominated CDs and DVDs. Cast your vote online.
Richard Jones's new production of Benjamin Britten's Gloriana runs from 20 June - 6 July 2013. Tickets are now available.]]>
Before Richard Jones's new production of Benjamin Britten's coronation opera Gloriana opens in June, we asked Director of The Royal Opera Kasper Holten why the Company has chosen to stage this, one of the composer's rarer works.
'It's really a masterpiece and we look forward to doing it justice with possibly the greatest opera director alive today, Richard Jones', says Kasper.
He's equally excited about the rest of the cast and creative team, assembled for the work's first staging at Covent Garden since its premiere in 1953: 'We have a great cast led by Susan Bullock and Toby Spence, conducted by Paul Daniel. We're bringing the full resources of the Royal Opera House to show what a masterpiece it really is.'
Gloriana is the story of Queen Elizabeth I's love for the impulsive Earl of Essex. Set towards the end of Elizabeth's reign it is less historical romance and more a meditation on what it means to be Queen. The opera was created to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. This new production, which is one of the highlights of the Britten centenary year, has been generously supported by the Britten Pears Foundation and has also received support from the Boltini Trust.
Gloriana runs on the Main Stage from 20 June - 6 July 2013. Tickets are still available. The opera will also be screened live in cinemas on 24 June.]]>
Australian baritone Peter Coleman-Wright has withdrawn from singing the role of Sir Robert Cecil for all performances of Gloriana. The role will now be sung by British baritone Jeremy Carpenter, marking his debut with The Royal Opera.
Jeremy's previous roles include Gérard in Andrea Chénier and Escamillo in Carmen for Royal Swedish Opera, Belcore in L'elisir d'amore for Angers-Nantes Opéra and Talpa in concert performances of Puccini's Il tabarro with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra.
Richard Jones's new production of Gloriana runs from 20 June - 6 July]]>
Composers have often written roles with particular singers in mind. Mozart wrote the stratospherically high part of Die Zauberflöte's Queen of the Night for his sister-in-law Josepha Hofer; Rossini wrote many virtuosic high mezzo-soprano roles such as Elena in La donna del lago for his mistress (later wife) Isabella Colbran; and Britten's great tenor roles were all inspired by the unique voice of his partner Peter Pears.
We thought we'd take a look at some examples of recent Royal Opera commissions with roles written for specific singers:
Harrison Birtwistle - Gawain and The Minotaur
The roles of Green Knight (Gawain) and Minotaur (The Minotaur) were created for John Tomlinson.
Harrison Birtwistle and John Tomlinson first worked together when Tomlinson recorded the role of the Doctor in Birtwistle's Punch and Judy in 1979. When The Royal Opera commissioned Birtwistle to write Gawain, which premiered 12 years later, Birtwistle wrote the role of the majestic Green Knight specifically for Tomlinson. He modelled the character's vocal range on that of Wotan in Wagner's Ring Cycle, the role in which Tomlinson had made his Bayreuth Festival debut to great acclaim in 1988.
When Birtwistle was commissioned to write a second work for The Royal Opera, he chose the Greek myth of the Minotaur. From the start he envisaged the central role of the half-man, half-bull as being sung by Tomlinson, telling his publisher Boosey and Hawkes that "imagining John Tomlinson on stage in the lead role was integral to the whole project". David Harsent, Birtwistle's librettist, agreed, noting that he had Tomlinson's voice in mind when he wrote the libretto. Birtwistle based the vocal range and style of the Minotaur on another great Tomlinson Wagner role, Hagen in Götterdämmerung (which Tomlinson has sung many times for The Royal Opera). John Tomlinson was thrilled with the role of the Minotaur, telling MusicWeb that "the music was superb… it was perfect for me. There was a wonderful use of my bass voice with those haunting monologues and then the dramatic stuff in the public scenes".
Thomas Adès - The Tempest
The role of Prospero was created for Simon Keenlyside, and the role of Ariel for Cyndia Sieden.
Thomas Adès in his first Royal Opera commission created the central role of Prospero for British baritone Simon Keenlyside. Adès envisaged Prospero as a young, vigorous man rather than an elderly magician, and chose Keenlyside not only for his vocal gifts but also for his skill as a physical actor. Adès also wrote the spectacularly high and virtuosic role of the spirit Ariel for the American coloratura soprano Cyndia Sieden. The part is one of the hardest written for soprano: it ranges higher than the Queen of the Night in Die Zauberflöte, and the singer has to sing 17 high Es in the first few minutes of her first scene. Not surprisingly, Sieden is one of the few singers who can perform the role of Ariel (her singing at the world premiere of The Tempest was described as 'almost out of this world' by the Guardian. She has sung the part in four different productions of the opera.
Other singers in the world premiere cast of The Tempest may have influenced Adès's writing. For example, Adès's first Caliban was the British lyric tenor Ian Bostridge, whose particular vocal quality suits Adès's concept of the role, more wistful and lyrical than Shakespeare's original.
Mark-Anthony Turnage - Anna Nicole
The role of Anna Nicole was created for Eva-Maria Westbroek, and the role of the Lawyer Stern for Gerald Finley.
Eva-Maria Westbroek was recruited for the role of Playboy model Anna Nicole by the director Richard Jones, who'd worked with her on Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk for The Royal Opera in 2006 and been very impressed by her vocal and dramatic skills. When Jones was booked to direct Anna Nicole, he immediately thought of Westbroek for the title role. As she told Musical Criticism: "I was in a record shop in London… and bumped into Richard! He said, 'we want you for this opera written by Turnage.'" Westbroek went on to work extensively with composer Mark-Anthony Turnage and his librettist Richard Thomas as they created the opera. Westbroek enjoyed the challenges of the role (including some flamboyant coloratura for Anna Nicole's drug-fuelled rage in Act II) and later told the Independent: "this creative experience was one of the most exciting things I've ever been part of." Turnage stressed the importance of both Westbroek and Gerald Finley (who played Anna's lover, Lawyer Stern) in his compositional process, telling Boosey and Hawkes "I had the voices of Eva-Maria Westbroek and Gerald Finley in my head from the start".
The Minotaur returns to The Royal Opera from 17 - 28 January 2013. Tickets are still available.]]>
The recent production of Il trittico has been released on DVD, giving audiences another chance to see the acclaimed Richard Jones staging.
The Olivier-nominated Royal Opera production featuring a trio of one-act Puccini operas was first performed together on the same bill at Covent Garden in September 2011, and was acclaimed by the Telegraph as "an operatic treat... three hours of gorgeous music that allows big voices to let emotion rip" and by the Evening Standard as "a triumphant vindication of the social awareness and dramatic power of Puccini's triptych".
The trio of operas offers a panorama of emotions, with the dark and foreboding Il tabarro and comic Gianni Schicchi bookending a heart-wrenching Suor Angelica.
Blog Entartete Musik live tweeted the opening night and profiled each of the pieces prior to curtain up.
Conductor Antonio Pappano gave insights into the two new productions in the triptych. Watch the maestro reveal more about the music of Il tabarro and Suor Angelica
View production photos:
Ermonela Jaho as Sister Angelica, Gillian Webster as Alms Sister, Elizabeth Woollett as Nursing Sister, Elizabeth Sikora as Mistress of the novices in Suor Angelica © ROH / Bill Cooper 2011
Rebecca Evans as Nella, Lucio Gallo as Gianni Schicchi and Marie McLaughlin as La Ciesca in Gianni Schicci © ROH / Bill Cooper 2011
Francesco Demuro as Rinuccio, Alan Oke as Gherardo, Robert Poulton as Marco, Gwynne Howell as Simone, Lucio Gallo as Gianni Schicchi in Gianni Schicchi © ROH / Bill Cooper 2011
Ekaterina Siurina as Lauretta and Lucio Gallo as Gianni Schicchi in Gianni Schicchi © ROH / Bill Cooper 2011
Il trittico is available to buy on DVD now from the Royal Opera House Shop at Covent Garden and online from Opus Arte. The Royal Opera House online shop will return soon. The production will also be screened on BBC Four at 8pm on three consecutive Fridays: Il tabarro on the 15 June, Gianni Schicchi on the 22 June and Suor Angelica on 29 June.]]>
Richard Jones's production of Il trittico and Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek have been shortlisted for Royal Philharmonic Society Music awards.
The annual awards, presented in association with BBC Radio 3, are the highest recognition for live classical music in the UK. Awards, in 13 categories, are decided by independent panels consisting of some of the music industry's most distinguished figures. The awards honour musicians, composers, writers, broadcasters and inspirational arts organisations.
Nominated in the Opera and Theatre category, Richard Jones's production of Puccini's Il trittico opened in September 2011. Comprising three one-act operas by the composer - Il tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi - the programme received strong reviews. It was later screened internationally as part of the Royal Opera House cinema season.
Watch insights into Il tabarro and Suor Angelica from Tony Pappano
Soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek is nominated in the Singer category. The singer sang the title role in Anna Nicole, which premiered in February 2011 as well as in the aforementioned Il trittico. She returns to The Royal Opera this season in David McVicar's production of Les Troyens.
The winners will be announced on Tuesday 8 May at a ceremony at the Dorchester Hotel in London.]]>
The Royal Opera House will host the 36th Olivier Awards, the UK's highest stage honours, for the first time ever at a star-studded ceremony on Sunday 15 April 2012. The award ceremony will feature selection of specially created performances relayed live on big screens in Covent Garden.
In the opera categories, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Richard Jones are nominated; Turnage his composition of Anna Nicole for The Royal Opera and Twice Through The Heart for Sadler's Wells, and Jones for his direction of Anna Nicole, Il Trittico and The Tales of Hoffman for ENO. James MacMillan's Clemency for ROH2 is also nominated in the Best New Opera category.
The work of The Royal Ballet is present in two categories. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland's design team and Royal Ballet Principal Edward Watson for his performance in The Metamorphosis are both nominated for the Outstanding Achievement in Dance award. The Metamorphosis has also been nominated for Best New Dance Production.
Director of The Royal Ballet Monica Mason is to be presented with a special award in recognition of her influential career in the arts prior to her retirement this summer.
Other major companies receiving nominations at this year's awards include the Royal Shakespeare Company and The National Theatre
The awards will be broadcast via BBC Red Button and BBC Radio 2.
Full nomination details for this year's awards.]]>
As part of Royal Opera House Insights, he regularly presents informal introductions for live audiences here at Covent Garden, offering a unique view from the podium into the operatic repertoire. Check the website to book forthcoming Insights events.
Earlier this season, we filmed one of these when he introduced the music from Il tabarro and Suor Angelica, the first two operas in Puccini's Il trittico.
If this gives you a thirst for more Puccini, The Royal Opera present La bohème later this season. According to Pappano, no other opera better expresses the "irrepressible energy of youth".]]>
Anything but a drag to watch, the plot features three drag queens jumping on a bus (the Priscilla of the title) and taking a sequin-studded roadtrip through the Australian desert, where they meet a variety of characters, each of whom with differing attitudes to the trio. The film became a cult hit in the mid 90s, helping raise the profile of the Australian film industry once more after the post-Crocodile Dundee lull.
This clip sees Guy Pearce belting out the aria Follie! Delirio vano è questo (Madness! This is delirium) into the wilderness from atop the bus, sequined dress trailing behind the vehicle, rippling into the desert air...
Scorsese definitely wasn't punching above his weight in using the Intermezzo from Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana in the beautiful opening sequence of this seminal boxing flick. All slow motion air punches and atmospheric smoke, the shot from the side of the ring of Robert DeNiro weaving and bobbing his way through a warm up is the perfect example of the balletic aspects of boxing.
Two minutes of calm before the blood and spit start to fly…
No orcs and wizards this time around for Peter Jackson, instead the less magical but probably more intense tale of two girls and a brutal murder using a brick in a stocking. Based on a true story, Heavenly Creatures tells the tale of two friends in New Zealand who take disturbing revenge after their parents separate them, becoming concerned their fantasy is too intense.
Puccini's Coro a bocca chiusa (the famous Humming Chorus) is used to eerie effect in this scene, just before the brutal murder of one of the girl's mothers in a Christchurch park.
As a word of warning, the second half of this clip does contain material some viewers may find disturbing...
They might have claimed to have reinvented Bond with the arrival of Daniel Craig a few years back, but aside from a bit more grit, it's still largely an action and entendre affair (though admittedly with fewer gadgets since Q's sad passing a decade or so back).
Bond may be dispatching baddies in as rapid succession as ever but this time around, he does squeeze in quick trip to the opera at Bregenz – all part of the job of course. Environmentalist organisation Quantum is the latest in a long line of MI6 botherers, attempting to control Bolivia's national water supply. In this scene head honcho Dominic Greene (Mathieu Almaric) and his entourage hold a secret meeting during a performance of Tosca, the aria in question being Scarpia´s Va, Tosca (Te Deum) from the end of Act 1. But they are not alone and a rather short-tempered Bond manages to get in a dig at his quarry's lack of theatrical decorum…
Based on the E.M. Forster novel of the same name, A Room with a View takes a swipe at social norms in Edwardian England with the aristocratic Lucy (a young Helena Bonham Carter) falling for dashing free spirit George (Julian Sands). With any other cast it might be a rather formulaic love story set against a social backdrop on the cusp of change. However, a stellar ensemble (Simon Callow, Maggie Smith, Judy Dench and Daniel Day Lewis) and a smattering of Puccini make this a far from mediocre affair.
This montage clip features the aria Oh Mio Babbino Caro from Gianni Schicchi sung by Kiri Te Kanawa...
We'll be counting down the final 10 films over the rest of the week. In the meantime, what are your favourite films featuring opera?
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Ermonela Jaho as Sister Angelica, Gillian Webster as Alms Sister, Elizabeth Woollett as Nursing Sister, Elizabeth Sikora as Mistress of the novices in Suor Angelica © ROH / Bill Cooper 2011
Rebecca Evans as Nella, Lucio Gallo as Gianni Schicchi and Marie McLaughlin as La Ciesca in Gianni Schicci © ROH / Bill Cooper 2011
Francesco Demuro as Rinuccio, Alan Oke as Gherardo, Robert Poulton as Marco, Gwynne Howell as Simone, Lucio Gallo as Gianni Schicchi in Gianni Schicchi © ROH / Bill Cooper 2011
Ekaterina Siurina as Lauretta and Lucio Gallo as Gianni Schicchi in Gianni Schicchi © ROH / Bill Cooper 2011