La traviata - Royal Opera House, 17 January 2012
Four years ago to the day, a barely-known Albanian soprano named Ermonela Jaho made an unexpected Covent Garden debut in La traviata. Anna Netrebko had pulled out sick at short notice. With just hours to prepare, Jaho charmed, moved and placated the disappointed audience. Last night, with Netrebko sick again, Jaho was called in to repeat her coup - or more accurately, to extend her already-scheduled run.
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Il trittico - Royal Opera House, 14 September 2011
How do you handle a death in the family? Try to blot it out in sex without love (Giorgetta in Il tabarro)? Seek solace in religion without faith (Suor Angelica)? Or do you just treat it as a business opportunity, money without scruples (Gianni Schicchi)?
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La Traviata - Royal Opera House, 11 May 2010 (first night)
One big star - step forward Dmitri Hvorostovsky - wasn't quite enough to give make this umpteenth showing of Richard Eyre's gracefully ageing production twinkle quite as brightly as its last two revivals.
Continue reading "La traviata resuscitated at Royal Opera House " »
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Here first! - a full list of all the Royal Opera House's main stage productions for the 2009/10 season.
The 2009/10 Covent Garden season opens with neither bang nor whimper but with a credit-crunching concert performance on 7 September (repeated on 14 September). Makes a change from last year's Sun readers' special I suppose.
The opera in question is Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix, and the conductor is bel canto genius Mark Elder. The cast includes potential Next Big Things Stephen Costello, Eglise Gutierrez and Luciano Botelho, plus the incomparable Alessandro Corbelli, the first of several welcome appearances this season.
The first staged opera of the season is Nicholas Hytner's lego-loving Don Carlo, with - OMG!- Jonas Kaufmann !!! in the title role. John Tomlinson joins him as the Grand Inquisitor, and the rest of the cast is lifted straight from the first run - Marina Poplavskaya, Simon Keenlyside, fans' favourite Ferruccio Furlanetto, Sonia Ganassi and Pumeza Matshikiza.The conductor is Semyon Bychkov.
This season's contribution to the 2013 Wagnerversary is a new Christof Loy production of Tristan und Isolde. Antonio Pappano conducts Ben Heppner, Nina Stemme, Matti Salminen, Michael Volle and Sophie Koch.
Neigh! Francesco Zambello's ghastly Carmen returns in October, with the latest Covent Garden favourite Elina Garanca back for the title role, fighting off Roberto Alagna, Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, and a farmyard full of furry friends. Bertrand de Billy conducts. It's resuscitated again in June 2010 with a distinctly 'B' cast.
October also sees one of Richard Jones's more subtle and effective efforts back on stage - and attractively cast. The shouldn't-work-but-it-does double bill of Ravel's L'Heure Espagnole (Christine Rice, Yann Beuron, Christopher Maltman, Andrew Shore and Bonaventura Bottone) and Puccini's Gianni Schicchi (Thomas Allen, Maria Bengtsson and Stephen Costello) is conducted by Pappano.
Francesco Zambello steps into Tchaikovsky's The Slippers in November. The new production will be conducted by Alexander Polianichko and features some serious talent fresh from the Mariinsky - Olga Guryakova, Vsevolod Grivnov, Larissa Diadkova, Vladimir Matorin and Maxim Mikhailov.
John Schlesinger's elderly Der Rosenkavalier is dusted off in December. Kirill Petrenko conducts and the cast includes Soile Isokoski, Sophie Koch, Thomas Allen and Lucy Crowe.
Littering the December and January schedules is the inevitable La Bohème. This time Andris Nelsons conducts most of the double-cast performances, which begin with Piotr Beczala and Hibla Gerzmava and end with not a few tbc's.
Robert Lepage's intermittently effective Rake's Progress returns in January 2010. Ingo Metzmacher, Toby Spence (a Tom Rakewell tdf), Kate Royal, Kyle Ketelsen and Stephanie Blythe promise much on the musical side.
Female conductor alert! Top Lisboan Julia Jones wields the baton over Jonathan Miller's Cosi fan Tutte in January. The cast includes Charles Castronovo and Sally Matthews.
A new Richard Jones production of Prokofiev's The Gambler in February is conducted by Pappano, with a cast including Roberto Sacca, Angela Denoke, John Tomlinson and Jurgita Adamonyte.
Plácido Domingo's first appearance of the season is as a tenor. Graham Vick's acclaimed production of Handel's Tamerlano (recorded in Madrid and available on DVD con Plácido)
Bill Bryden's family-friendly The Cunning Little Vixen returns in March with Emma Matthews, Christopher Maltman and Emma Bell, though the presence of Charles Mackerras on the podium has to be the main draw.
Caurier and Leiser's lovely Il Turco in Italia is back in April, with Maurizio Benini conducting, and Aleksandra Kursak, Colin Lee, Alessandro Corbelli, Thomas Allen and Ildebrando d'Arcangelo in the cast.
Aida is subjected to the David McVicar magic in April. His new production is conducted by Nicola Luisotti and features Micaela Carosi, Marcelo Alvarez and Luciana D'Intino. Bare naked elephants?
The last of the Big Three, Richard Eyre's subtly intelligent La Traviata, makes its annual appearance in May and July. This time her name's in the programme - Our first Lady of the Camellias is the fabulous former Netrebko sub Ermonela Jaho. Joining her in her long-awaited return to Covent Garden in May are Saimir Pirgu and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. July's 'B' Violetta is Angela Gheorghiu, who makes do with James Valenti and Zeljko Lucic. Yves Abel conducts.
Laurent Pelly's now-legendary La Fille du Régiment returns in May with the unbeatable original cast of Juan Diego Flórez, Natalie Dessay, Alessandro Corbelli and Felicity Palmer back in place. Bruno Campanella conducts.
What would tempt Sir Colin Davis back into the pit? How about David McVicar's Le Nozze di Figaro? Erwin Schrott, Camilla Tilling, Maruisz Kwiecen. Annette Dasch, Soile Isokoski and Christine Schäfer head the strong cast.
Antonio Pappano conducts Laurent Pelly's new Manon, coming to Covent Garden in June with the announced cast including Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón. Anyone fancy a bet?
In one of those rare operatic fairy stories, June sees a baritone with less than a year's experience thrust into a leading role at Covent Garden. Yes, it's Plácido Domingo again, and this time he's Simon Boccanegra. Antonio Pappano conducts a strong cast including Marina Poplavskaya, Ferruccio Furlanetto and Joseph Calleja. It's the 1991 Elijah Moshinsky production by the way, not the Ian Judge one seen last year.
The season ends in July 2010 with the first revival of David McVicar's controversial Salome. Angela Denoke takes the central role, with Johan Reuter as Jokanaan. Hartmut Haenchen conducts.
No link yet, but more details expected on the Royal Opera House website sometime next week.
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*******UPDATE 22/4*******
The Royal Opera House's press releases are now available on their website. Go here for the summary, here for the opera details and here for the ballet.
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After her show-saving cover job for the sick Anna Netrebko in the Royal Opera House's January La Traviata, followed by a 'simply stunning' last minute substitution in San Diego Opera's Maria Stuarda last month, news comes via An Unamplified Voice that Ermonela Jaho has once more stepped into the breach. This time, it was back to La Traviata for a shortest-of-notice Met debut on Saturday night when Ruth Ann Swenson dropped out with the 'flu. No reviews have turned up as yet, but I'd be surprised if any Met patrons walked away disappointed.
A scheduled role at Covent Garden can't be far away - can it?
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La traviata - Royal Opera House, 17 January 2008
Denied the advertised Anna Netrebko due to a sudden-onset 'bronchial condition' (which will no doubt clear as soon as teh shops open), we learned only hours before tonight's Covent Garden performance of La traviata that our replacement Violetta was to be Ermonela Jaho, aka -- 'who?'
Actually, that's not fair -- the name struck a faint bell, and sure enough, a little scrabbling around, and I found her name on a favourite Juan Diego Flórez recording. Well, if she's good enough for JDF.....
The suspiciously perceptive Royal Opera House, who probably by now realise that every Netrebko contract comes with a sicknote, had cannily flown in Jaho the night before. And that's not all - as it became evident that she had every move of this fiddly production pegged, it was obvious Jaho either a) is the world's fastest learner, b) has been cramming DVDs for weeks dreaming of getting 'the call' or c) has somehow and who knows how managed to fit in more than one day's rehearsal.
But enough of the conspiracy theory. Could she do the job? Could she replace the 'once in a generation' performance of the soprano who conquered (-ish) even London's testiest critic?
At first it didn't seem so. In contrast to her classically elegant ballerina looks, her singing was graceless and squally, with a vibrato you could drive a truck through. But she drove pluckily on, and as her solo scene drew the first act to a close, the tone sweetened and smoothed out. Just nerves, then, and who could blame her? Not the easiest way to make a Covent Garden debut.
If her È strano was cautious, her Sempre libera rather buttoned-up, the massive ovation she got at the end of Act I must have boosted her confidence, because after the interval we saw what Jaho could really do.
Jaho may lack Netrebko's brassballed charisma, but she does score in a few areas where Netrebko's not even in the game, namely sincerity, humility and warmth. Her clean, silvery tone is not broadly coloured, nor does she play with dynamic extremes. Nuance rather than gesture is her weapon. As she slid downward through her Act II showdown with Germont père, each tiny straw of hope snatched away from her grasp one by one, the voice glowed and dimmed. Her desperation is corseted and dignified, and all the more credible for it. It was a bravely open performance. I don't doubt Netrebko would have given a very different reading, but Jaho's was subtle, coherent and most of all, touching. I was far from the only one in tears. And more than once.
And I think I should point out that every one of Jaho's notes was clear, even toned and accurately placed - of course that should be a given, but I can't recall the last soprano I heard here who managed it.
Violetta's illness was portrayed in too non-specific a way - not a cough to be heard (plenty to compensate in the audience of course...) and the protracted death scene, delivered as a Dawn of the Dead zombie walk around the set, was misplaced, but otherwise there were no holes to be picked in Jaho's performance.
And she had fine support from Jonas Kaufmann as Alfredo and Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Germont. Vocally and dramatically Kaufmann was faultless, and so hawt you could fry eggs on him. And not one second of 'underpowered' either, as some of the first night critics claimed - every note was stadium-sized. Though he remains about as Italian as Hamburger con cipolle, this is no flaw in a performance this dynamic and committed.
Hvorostovsky sang wonderfully throughout, with a great attention to detail. He had the appropriate patrician assurance for most requirements, a natural authority that marked his presence, but couldn't unbend sufficiently to make key moments like his final reconciliation with Violetta work dramatically.
Although none of the smaller roles were hugely impressive, the ROH chorus once again did a fabulous job, despite in some places getting not a lot of help from conductor Maurizio Benini, who should be collared for reckless disregard of an orchestra. There were so many instances when musicians threatened to part company totally with singers. But he did pull out the light, sprightly performance that was needed.
Just before the performance started, a cheer went up. I looked around, and there, in one of the boxes, were a bride and bridegroom in full wedding gear, veil included. What a way to start a honeymoon. I do hope Netrebko didn't ruin their special day by not turning up, but they looked happy enough. There were plenty of people not best pleased before the performance (including some Germans who'd travelled just to see Netrebko) - but I didn't hear one complaint at the end. Could Jaho be the cure for Netrebko cancellitis?
***UPDATE*** - check out another perspective on the same performance, and a useful round up of the reviews, from Mad Musings of Me
above, Ermonela Jaho sings from La traviata - not tonight's production though.
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