Yevgeny Onegin - Opera Holland Park, 13 July 2012
Proof that opera companies never talk to each other. With recent stagings by English Touring Opera (conventional but revelatory) and ENO (best forgotten) cutting into each other's audiences, Eugene Onegin is the opera of the year. Now Opera Holland Park enter the fray.
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Zanetto / Gianni Schicchi - Opera Holland Park, 22 June 2012 (opening night)
Kudos to Opera Holland Park for continuing, year after year, to revive long-forgotten Italian operas. But in the case of Mascagni's one act Zanetto, I wonder if it was worth the effort. The ruminative non-plot and politely anonymous music make its 40 minutes pass like four hours.
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Così fan tutte - Opera Holland Park, 16 June 2012
The weather had improved marginally by Saturday - theoretically midsummer - but no-one was dressing for the calendar. Even the tutelary goddess of W11, Dame Lady Antonia Fraser, was wisely wrapped in full winter wear as a devious wind flicked scarves into eyes and hair into lipgloss.
Pity the singers, with their expanses of 18th century bosomage exposed to every chilly draft.
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500 tickets are available for the Gianni Schicchi/Zanetto double bill. They cost nothing, but a donation is encouraged.
Call the box office on 0300 9991000 and quote “opera challenge” to reserve - up to two tickets per person are available.
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Lucia di Lammermoor - Opera Holland Park, 12 June 2012
There's nothing to beat open-air opera on a warm summer's evening. But the winter coats and woolly hats were out in force on Tuesday night for the chilliest start to a Holland Park season that I can remember.
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Opera Holland Park have yet again changed the system for buying the limited number of £12 'Inspire' seats. These now go on sale before the the others (meaning that if you miss out, you have the opportunity to buy a more expensive seat later) and will be sold online only. The tickets will be sold in three batches on different dates in April, and there's a limit of 2 tickets per production and 6 tickets in total for each applicant. Full details on the OHP website.
The other change is a new wealth redistribution scheme called "sponsor and inspire". Friends of OHP (who pay £45+ a year for advance booking privileges) will be invited to donate £40 to convert one of the higher priced seats to an Inspire seat. OHP hope a few hundred might do so. Everyone who forks out will have their name printed on the ticket for that seat. Will that encourage the many corporate customers to loosen their purse strings I wonder?
If you're interested in becoming a Friend, you need to join by 6 January to qualify for advance booking (includes the incomprehensibly coveted picnic tables as well as tickets).
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I expressed some reservations about Opera Holland Park's new distribution method for their cheap £12 'Inspire' tickets at the time it was announced. And, wouldn't you know it, my predictions materialised.
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Le nozze di Figaro - Opera Holland Park, 2 July 2011 (first night)
Liam Steel's new production of Le nozze di Figaro gets a Downton Abbey update to early 20th century England, with Figaro himself an unnervingly camp Jeeves-like butler/fixer. Otherwise it's remarkably similar to David McVicar's Royal Opera House production, right down to the fussy clutter of underlings in every scene.
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Don Pasquale - Opera Holland Park, 9 June 2011
The last time I saw this opera was at the Met, where the starry pairing of Anna Netrebko and Mariusz Kwiecień dominated a traditionally-styled production. Faced with a somewhat less glamorous cast at Holland Park, Stephen Barlow cleverly makes a virtue of their homeliness by relocating the story in a faded English seaside resort. Don Pasquale (Donald Maxwell) runs the clapped out Casa del Fish'n'Chips. Norina (Majella Cullagh, unflatteringly costumed) is a buxom lady of a certain age, in the circumstances a delightfully credible pursuer.
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See an opera at Holland Park for nothing!
The Opera Challenge scheme introduced last year is to be repeated. 100 *free* tickets for each performance of Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz (June 10, 15, 17, 21, 23, and 25) will be allocated on a first come first served basis (maximum 4 per person).
Although the tickets are technically free, you are encouraged to pay whatever you think they're worth by way of a donation to OHP’s Inspire Project, which helps develop new audiences.
I'll leave you to interpret the instructions in the press release: "To apply, telephone the box office on 0300 999 1000 and quote ‘the opera challenge’ from Tuesday 31 May. Tickets for the Opera Challenge are only available online." *UPDATE* - these tickets are not available online - see OHP Mike's comment below.
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Opera Holland Park have released booking details for their 2011 season (thanks to Vecchio John for the tip off). It's their most promising season yet, opening on 7 June with Richard Bonynge conducting Colin Lee in Don Pasquale and continuing with L'amico Fritz, Le nozze di Figaro, La rondine, Rigoletto and La Wally.
But there's a big change which won't please everyone.
Continue reading "Opera Holland Park 2011 booking details released" »
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Francesca da Rimini - Opera Holland Park, 7 August 2010
Overcooked and under-inspired, Zandonai's opera itself isn't exactly a lost masterpiece, but there's enough in the Wagneresque orchestration and frantic melodrama to make it worth staging. The Met clearly think so too; they're putting it on in 2012.
Even with the reduced orchestration of Opera Holland Park, Philip Thomas made a compelling case for taking the score seriously. Nevertheless the rambling libretto, forgettable melodies and a curious dramatic structure that sidelines major plot points work against it.
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La forza del destino - Opera Holland Park, 6 August 2010
Destiny? It's coincidence and misunderstanding that motor this credulity-testing plot. Martin Duncan has opted for a barely-there approach, perhaps hoping to spotlight the personal drama and skim over the rest. The otherwise empty stage is populated with scores of paint-splattered chairs, helpful in delineating the space as chapel or inn where required, a mystifying intrusion elsewhere, especially when suspended jiggling from the roof.
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For their most interesting (and risky) project of the season, Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini, Opera Holland Park are introducing a pay as you please scheme.
100 people each night will be given ~free~ tickets, and they can make a donation afterwards if they like what they see.
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Here's the full press release with details of how to apply:
‘OPERA CHALLENGE’ – TRY BEFORE YOU BUY AT OPERA HOLLAND PARK!
Opera Holland Park (OHP), owned and managed by The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, are giving people the chance to „try before you buy‟ in their new „Opera Challenge’. As part of the company‟s new Inspire Project, they are making one hundred tickets per night available to opera goers in a bid to get opera aficionados to expand their repertoire and to encourage absolute newcomers to enjoy a slice of late Italian opera.
The „Opera Challenge’ is allowing 700 people to watch this season‟s OHP signature piece, Francesca da Rimini, to see if they like it or not: if they do they are invited to make a donation to the Friends of OHP charity who help fund the Inspire Project. If not, they can walk away and pay nothing.
Michael Volpe, General Manager of Opera Holland Park says: “The innovative ‘Opera Challenge’ being offered by the company is a way to introduce new audiences to opera, which is a major aim of our Inspire Project. Francesca da Rimini is not for opera enthusiasts alone – it is, in reality, a perfect first time opera too and appeals to those who either don‟t know or who listen to opera rarely.” The „Opera Challenge’ is part of OHP’s ongoing audience development and education programme, the Inspire Project, which is a comprehensive outreach, community and education scheme.
The OHP „Opera Challenge’ will rely on an „honesty‟ system, in order to provide enough donations from this initiative, to enable them to carry on the work of introducing the art form to young and old alike in the community. Volpe continues: “We understand that people may simply decide not to make a donation, but this is genuinely about encouraging people to try something different – and we are so confident that people will enjoy the piece that we are happy to offer the opportunity to so many.”
For further information about the ‘Opera Challenge’ visit www.inspire.operahollandpark.com
Notes to editors: Opera Holland Park has made a reputation over the years for producing some of the most exciting operas of the late Italian repertoire; L’amore dei Tre Re (Montemezzi), Iris (Mascagni) Fedora and Andrea Chenier (Giordano) L’arlesiana and Adriana Lecouvreur (Cilea) et al. These composers were trying to create a new Italian age of opera that sought to blend the new „sounds‟ coming from Germany with the innate Italian sentiments of the time. The soundscape they created referred heavily to the work of Wagner and in particular his Tristan; some of the most inventive operatic writing in Italian history emerged from this movement. OHP have especially made a success of producing works from this movement - the „giovane scuola‟ composers - and their latest offering, the magnificent Francesca da Rimini by Riccardo Zandonai, opens on July 30th at the spectacular covered theatre in Holland Park.
Francesca is an opera of mesmerising beauty and accomplishment. Starring international soprano Cheryl Barker and Julian Gavin (who recently excelled in ENO‟s Tosca) and a host of exciting emergent talent, OHP‟s Francesca is a rare treat and a significant operatic event this year.
Booking Information: Patrons will be given a donation form with their tickets and are invited to make a minimum donation of £30 up to a maximum of the value of the tickets they have occupied. To apply, they simply need to telephone the box office and book their preferred date – tickets are strictly limited to 100 per performance (1,000 seat auditorium) so it is subject to availability. They will then receive tickets and an information pack. This challenge is not bookable online. Quote ‘Opera Challenge’ Francesca da Rimini (Zandonai) July 30, August 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 at 7.30pm
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Don Giovanni - Opera Holland Park, 30 June 2010
Set Don Giovanni ‘correctly’ in seventeenth century Seville and its social subtleties will fly over the heads of half the spectators. Bring it too far up to date and its mores won’t make sense. For an audience reared on BBC bonnet drama, Stephen Barlow’s ingenious update to late Victorian London makes perfect sense. Years of Pride, Prejudice and Nicholas Nickleby have trained us to tell a nineteenth century oik from a toff at twenty paces.
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The National Portrait Gallery stays open late (to 9pm) on Fridays, and for a while now it's been quietly hosting free concerts at 6.30pm on Friday evenings.
Today's features musicians from the City of London Sinfonia (Opera Holland Park's resident orchestra) and OHP singers with a selection of arias from this season's operas.
Admission to the NPG and to the concert itself is free.
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Carmen - Opera Holland Park, 2 June 2010
Just about every last skirt-flicking, thigh-slapping cliché in the book is packed into Opera Holland Park's new but very traditional Carmen. It may not cast a radically fresh light on the old chestnut, yet it rarely feels tired or predictable in the way Francesca Zambello's overcooked Covent Garden production does.
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Although the £10 tickets for Opera Holland Park sold out practically the minute they went on sale in March, there is hope if you missed out.
As part of their Inspire Project (an education, outreach and audience development programme), OHP are going to be making a few more cheap ticket offers at short notice. The take-up will also help them work out the best way to run the cheap ticket scheme in future.
As cher Mike of OHP puts it "We are finding that those who know us and are geared up to take advantage of the ten pound seat scheme tend to exclude the chance to give others we also want to target (they are not organised and aware nor necessarily looking for opera etc) and these offers and promotions give us that opportunity. We also know that many people just simply miss out - opera lovers."
First up is their new Carmen, which opened on Wednesday. It's a brilliant production, one of the best they've done (I will post my thoughts later today, but meanwhile check out George Hall's Guardian review) and the whole run is almost sold out.
If you want to see it on Monday 7 June (only) for £10, call 0845 230 9769 and give the password PURPLE. There are a limited number of seats, so it's first-come, first-served.
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Opera Holland Park's 2010 season opened tonight to the sound of water on canvas. Yes, it's June, so it must be raining. OHP usually, miraculously, miss the very worst of the capricious summer weather, but today it was a geriatric Glasto, puddles everywhere, a leaking roof and a trail of mud. And effing freezing to boot. You don't go to a summer opera festival to see your own breath.
Olivia Fuchs's new production of Pelléas et Mélisande didn't stand a chance.
We stuck it out till the interval, ninety minutes of shivering in the damp and wind to the patter of falling rain, then cold-footed it home for warming cups of tea, missing out on what promised to be some solid performances, particularly from Palle Knudsen (Pelléas) and Anne Sophie Duprels (Mélisande). Yannis Thavoris's all-white set, scattered with huge geometric shapes like a bodged Ikea kitchen, was less successful, often dominating the singers' attention as they struggled around it. Still, I would have liked to have given it a fair go, but there's a reason why Wagner erected a Festspielhaus and not a tent.
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A useful if misleadingly titled piece in the Evening Standard - 'Best garden operas in London' - lists what you can see outside the main opera houses this summer. Season summaries and contact details are included for Glyndebourne, Garsington, Grange Park, Iford Festival Opera, Longborough Festival Opera, Nevill Holt, West Green House, Holland Park, Bampton Classical Opera, Woodhouse, The Garden Opera Company and Opera Brava.
It arrives a bit late, with many of the performances listed long sold out, but it's worth signing up for returns lists where available. Glyndebourne in particular generally has returned tickets available for most shows.
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