Let the 2011-12 opera season announcements begin!
First past the post (as far as I know - feel free to correct me) is De Nederlandse Opera, better known as Amsterdam Opera outside the land of the dikes.
As usual, Pierre Audi presents a bold season, with two world premieres - a contemporary version of the Oresteia called Orest by Manfred Trojahn (!!!) and Waiting for Miss Monroe by Robin de Raff, featuring Laura Aikin as Marilyn Monroe.
Anish Kapoor collaborates with Pierre Audi to create a new Parsifal. Ivan Fischer will conduct the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and the cast includes Petra Lang, Chris Ventris and Falk Struckmann.
Marc Minkowski brings in his Les Musiciens du Louvre orchestra for Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride in a Pierre Audi production. And there's another visiting period orchestra - Concerto Koln with Ivor Bolton - for David Alden's new production of Handel's last opera, Deidamia.
Robert Lepage's 2010 Aix-en-Provence Festival success The Nightingale and Other Fables pays a visit and perhaps most promising of all, Dmitri Tcherniakov is let loose on Rimsky-Korsakov's The Legend of the Invisible City Kitesj and the girl Fevronja, which features Kristine Opolais.
Subscriptions are already on sale; individual tickets are (theoretically) sold 3 months before the production starts, though in practice I've been able to buy them much earlier than that.
