Contents
FRONT OF HOUSE EDITORIAL French opera takes centre stage
LETTERS Your views and suggestions
NEWS & NOTES Opera Colorado launches 40th anniversary • Cricket and community opera at Garsington • Oxford Lieder celebrates 21st birthday
22 14
IER
GARN
THOMAS
REVIEWS - UK FESTIVAL REVIEWS Buxton International Festival (40); The Grange Festival, Hampshire (44); Garsington Opera (46); Nevill Holt Opera (48) Dorset Opera (50) Longborough Opera (52)
- LIVE REVIEWS Paris – Versailles Titon et L’Aurore (54); Company focus: Les Talens Lyriques (56): Théâtre de Champs Elysées La Vestale; Potsdam Sanssouci Festival Le amazzoni nell’ isole fortunate; Japan focus (58): Tokyo Nikkai Opera Parsifal; New National Theatre Tokyo Orfeo ed Euridice
- RECORDINGS New releases on CD & DVD including: Kirsten Meyer Memorial Edition, Meyerbeer’s L’Étoile du Nord, Saint-Saëns Henry VIII; Verdi’s Don Carlo, Catalani’s La Wally; Opera Now Choice: Verdi’s Falstaff from the Maggio Musicale, Florence
- SPOTLIGHT World Wide Opera Guide and answers to this issue’s Quiz (p71)
COVER PHOTO: ERIC LARRAY
www.operanow.co.uk
LARRAY
IC
ER
‘All the different types of music I’m involved with nourish each other – it’s symbiotic. Without one
or the other, I am not whole’
CONTENTS
34
ION
BR
STEFAN
54
Sir Bryn Terfel on tour One of the UK’s most treasured artists takes to the road…
Fit for a King The coming season’s highlights from the Royal Opera in Versailles, one of the most beautiful and lively theatres in France… and operatic offerings around Paris Cover feature: A Mezzo with Mettle One of the most distincitive, unaffected mezzo sopranos of her generation, Marina Viotti discusses her unconventional route into opera via symphonic metal and jazz Love, ancient and modern John Adams discusses his latest opera, the Shakespeare-inspired Antony and Cleopatra, receiving its world premiere in San Francisco In Search of a Lost Princess Opera Rara is reviving Offenbach’s La Princesse de Trébizonde, in
a new critical edition pieced together by way of some intriguing musicological detective work
Six Tales of Hoffmann Francis Muzzu picks his favourite half-dozen versions of Offenbach’s masterpiece, on record and on film
Unleashing a storm Francesco Cilluffo conducts Fromental Halévy’s long-lost Shakespearean opera La tempesta at this year’s Wexford Festival Opera
My Favourite Things Barbara Hannigan on the importance of metronomes and the delights of kittens
Quiz Test your opera knowledge
OperaNow September 2022 3
