ONTENTS

JUNE 1994

Editor Graeme Kay Deputy Editor Rachel Connolly Associate Editors Ashutosh Khandekar

Clare Stewart Art Editor Sarah Davies Deputy Art Editors

Steve Talkington Phi! Wingrove Advertising Manager

Sarah Williams Sales Executive Matthew Potter Advertising Production

Manager Joanna Moore Subscriptions Clare Squire Marketing Manager

Richard Thomas Publishing Manager

Therese Claffey Marketing Director

Keith Diggle Managing Director

Tony Gamble Printed in the UK by

Perfectaprint Byfleet, Surrey Distributed by Comag

(0895 444055) (Front cover) Cheryl Studer Photo: DGG (R ight) Amhony Rolfe Jolmson as Peter Grimes

Photo: Bill Cooper

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Opera news and features The price of success: new seasons at Covent Garden and English National Opera (6) • Edinburgh's long-awaited opera house; Proms opera preview (8) • People in the news: conductor Yuri Temirkanov; composers Louis Andriessen and Martin Butler; and Sadler's Wells Opera veteran Eric Shilling ( 10) • news in brief ( 13)

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Music theatre special feature Kent Opera is back with The Prodigal Son. Richard Fawkes talks to founder Norman Platt, and producer Tim Carroll (16)

• Peter Maxwell Davies' stunning operatic mystery, The Lighthouse is revived by Music Theatre Wales. Rachel Connolly reports (20)

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Cover feature Sing-anything Cheryl Studer is back at Covent Garden as Aida. Phi I Sommerich profiles an unusually versatile American soprano

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Singers of the Century Arleen Auger's singing was suffused with human warmth; she died at the peak of her powers. John Steane pays tribute to a lyric soprano who put dedication to music before career

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Opera People Andrew Stewart meets designer David Fielding, now branching out into directing; Covent Garden's 'other' Aida Nina Rautio, and the ebullient tenor Giuseppe Sabbatini

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Every day another miracle ... Anne Inglis joins Welsh National Opera and discovers that no show would ever make it to the stage without brains, brawn and Marks & Spencer

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Opera Guide Wagner's monumental Ring cycle presents opera companies with their biggest single challenge. In the first of a four-part series, Noel Goodwin introduces the prelude to the main event- Das Rheingold

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Opera World Opera with a wall and with no back wall at all? St Louis and Santa Fe offer two of the US A's more exotic operatic experiences. Heidi Waleson reports

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