CONTENTS I April Issue 2012
COMPETITION 24 Win a DVD ofRossini's Le Comte
Ory starring Juan Diego A6rez
Opera Now's INTERNATIONAL GUIDE to the best live performances this summer
PLUS: The pick of opera on TV and in cinemas during April
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Welcome S
hould the Royal Opera House be held accountable for its failures? Last month's British premiere of Judith Weir's new opera Miss Fortune was a disappointing affair, banal and full of crass stereotypes of a world in which black hoodies break-dance across the stage vandalising the lives of the honest working-class masses and terrorising rich white girls.
The ingredients probably looked fine on paper: Weir is an experienced British composer who attracts a good measure of critical acclaim. The story of Miss Fort~me deals with contemporary issues: wealth, poverty, class and race - all strong, relevant themes. So what went wrong? Surely the warning signals at Miss Fortune's world premiere at the Bregenz Festival last summer could have been heeded and acted upon before the opera ever came to London? What I saw on opening night in Covent Garden seemed like money and effort that could have been put to better use.
The ROH has no clear role filled by an artistic director at the moment, and the cracks are beginning to show. The past few months have seen endlessly warmed-up revivals of La traviata, old productions dressed up in fancy packaging, and seemingly random imports that have little appeal for London audiences (the recent first night of Rusalka, a highly conceptual staging brought to Covent Garden from the Salzburg Festival, was booed to the rafters and only saved by gold-standard music-making).
There is, however, a new team taking the lead on productions at the ROH under the aegis of the title 'Director of Opera'. Kasper Holten (from the Royal Danish Opera) and John Fulljames (founder of the innovative Opera Group) have strong artistic instincts and credentials that now need to come to the fore in the ROH's planning. They have arrived at Covent Garden in the nick of time. With the focus on London's status as a world-class city over the next few months, thanks to the Olympics, this is a moment for one of the capital's premier arts institutions to deliver a coherent artistic mission that says something about London's place as a cultural leader, rather than a follower of fashion.
Opera Now APRIL 2012
Ashutosh Khandekar
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