On 19 May, the Bavarian State Opera website will be streaming I Capuleti e i Montecchi live - and free.
Vincent Boussard's stylish production, which I saw last year, features Vesselina Kasarova and Anna Netrebko as Romeo and Juliet. The sumptuous Christian Lacroix costumes are worth tuning in for all by themselves.
Streaming begins at 7pm CET (6pm UK).
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When Vesselina Kasarova, Queen of Pants, signed up for this production (which premiered in March), there was some talk of it being her last-ever Romeo. However she's booked to return next year with Anna Netrebko, so perhaps she's not hanging up her boots just yet. And why should she? She still has all the notes. And her dashing Romeo convincingly displays the uncertainties of youth, whatever the calendar says.
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I Capuleti e i Montecchi - Royal Opera House, 30 March 2009
I booked tickets for both ends of the current Capuleti run (curiously, four weeks apart), on the basis that even a serial canceller like Netrebko wouldn't dare cop out of both. Luckily I dodged the inevitable and caught her twice.
She wasn't at her absolute best, occasionally forcing her tone or slipping beneath the note, in a way that suggested lapses of concentration rather than serious problems. But most of her singing was very lovely indeed - liquid, intelligent and delicately nuanced - and she even managed a good firm trill at one point.
It was announced that Elina Garanca was suffering from a cold - collective sigh - but that she'd sing anyway - delighted applause. I couldn't tell anything was amiss. As on the first night, she shaded Netrebko in purely vocal terms.
But there's a real partnership between these two, at the musical level and beyond, and it transcends any of the finicky technical stuff. Listening to their exquisitely-matched love duet, or watching them grapple playfully on the bed afterwards as the applause thundered out made that clear.
The orchestra's contribution was patchy - dodgy woodwind intonation marred the prelude, and a few moments of hush were unbalanced by over-enthusiastic violins. But the solos, especially the haunting horn that introduces Giulietta, were well-taken. As on the first night, the only real disappointment lay with the male roles - when you're playing the same game as Netrebko, Garanca, and Elder, you need to be in the same league - mere adequacy is just not enough.
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I Capuleti e i Montecchi - Royal Opera House, 2 March 2009 (opening night)
Sad - and surprising - to report that the Capuleti premiere couldn't quite match the thrilling rehearsal on Friday. Usually it's the other way round. But a little air had escaped from the balloon, a little of the lustre rubbed off. It was still very, very good though, with Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca taking a lot of the credit.
Not all of Netrebko's top notes were perfectly secure, her tone sometimes coarsened and she swooped and slid just a little bit more than good taste would suggest. But these were minor quibbles in a performance of immense musicality and warmth, one that moreover transcended the theatrical limitations of an elegant production which places aesthetic considerations above dramatic.
While others gesticulated hopefully, like a row of medieval Thunderbirds, Netrebko lived and breathed Giulietta's compulsive ardour with a calculated abandon. Her voice meshes perfectly with Elina Garanca's, most strikingly in their unison duet, a showstopping moment.
Garanca is not quite the actress Netrebko is, but can match and even surpass her for stamina and sheer beauty of tone. Netrebko I'm sure will have converted a few more unbelievers, and Garanca enhanced her rapidly growing reputation.
The blokes trail some way behind. None exactly fail, but none are up to the calibre of the supporting cast on Netrebko and Garanca's recent CD of the opera. The patrician gravity of Eric Owens's Capelio is marred by a vibrato so wide that the line sometimes disappears. Giovanni Battista Parodi's Lorenzo is dramatically effective, but unsteady of tone. And Joseph Calleja could eat the ROH's weedy Tebaldo, Dario Schmunk, for breakfast. With fries. The neatly colour-coded chorus (red for Capuleti, blue for Montecchi) were more impressive than the soloists, even if diction left something to be desired.
Mark Elder makes Bellini sound as clever as Mozart and as bold as Wagner. His tempos are on the slow side. Instead of the usual breathless rush of smudged notes, the spare details of the score emerge with crystal clarity. And he is so considerate of the singers, following Netrebko's caprices minutely, never rushing or overwhelming. The orchestra were on good form, though clearly not at their freshest. Horn and clarinet solos were painstakingly immaculate; pity the woodwind intonation wasn't.
Pier Luigi Pizzi's austerely elegant production looks routine in photos, but it's rigorously constructed, deceptively so. Pizzi is also his own designer. His architectural training results in a series of striking tableaux that are never simply random or just pretty.
What differentiates Bellini's version of the tale from Shakespeare's is its fatalistic propulsion. Each of Pizzi's sets simply shuffles the ever-present classical columns this way or that, a superficial adjustment of unvarying elements that underlines the inexorable fate of the young lovers. As Giulietta wakes in the tomb, drawing back the gauzy black veil which covers her prone form, we are reminded of her first appearance, kneeling alone in her room veiled in white, when - in a departure from Shakespeare - she wills her own death. What's missing from this production is detailed individual direction, personenregie, and as a result it's not as involving as more conventional interpretation might be. But if lives are guided by irresistible forces, not personal motivations, is that really an oversight?
For those who find Pizzi's allusions just a bit too subtle, there are some corking swordfights, courtesy of Fight Director Mike Loades, a man whose name should, by rights, be up there in lights with Anna Netrebko's. The Royal Opera House can always be relied on for a good scrap (some of the pathetic efforts I've seen in places like San Francisco and Vienna would be laughed off stage in London). But here they have surpassed themselves. The money spent on 'Actor Fighters' has not been wasted. Even Elina Garanca looks a doughty prospect with a weapon in her hand.
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many more photos over teh page.................
Continue reading "I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Royal Opera House" »
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Has Anna Netrebko sprouted wings? And did she run out of St Tropez halfway through basting her bewbs? Completely undoctored, I swear:
more later.........
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Is February over already?
Opera
At the Royal Opera House, I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca opens on 2 March. Kill for tickets.
Next up is a new double bill of Dido and Aeneas with Acis and Galatea opening 31 March. Choreographer Wayne McGregor, whose work demonstrates little musical sensibility, is the odd choice of director. Sarah Connolly, Lucy Crowe, Iestyn Davies and Danielle de Niese make their ROH debuts.
On 13 March there's a one-off performance of Verdi's Messa da Requiem . Antonio Pappano conducts Barbara Frittoli, Olga Borodina, Piotr Beczala and Ildar Abdrazakov. Sold out, but check for returns towards the date.
At ENO, there's a revival of one of their better recent productions, David Alden's Jenùfa with Amanda Roocroft.
English Touring Opera bring the Magic Flute to Hackney Empire on 12 and 14 March, with Katya Kabanova on 13 March. For authentic 'period' atmosphere (and a bargain), buy the cheapest balcony seats, then stand at the back with your beer (the balcony bar is open throughout the show).
On 2, 4 and 9 March the Royal Academy of Music present Haydn's charming La fedeltà premiata in their bijou but perfectly-formed theatre.
Jiří Bělohlávek and the BBCSO attempt an overdue rehabilitation of Martinů's Julietta in concert at the Barbican on 27 March, with Magdalena Kozena in the title role.
And on 28 March David Parry and the LPO bring Rossini's Ermione to the Royal Festival Hall.
Not opera
At the Barbican, 7 March is the BBCSO's Xenakis day. On 11 March Thomas Quasthoff presents a Bach and Handel programme. On 12 March it's the turn of Valery Gergiev and the LSO, who perform Parsifal's Act 3 with the awesome Rene Pape and the remarkably-tattooed Evgeny Nikitin. Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw visit on 14 and 15 March with Beethoven's 7th and Bruckner's 9th.
The Royal Festival Hall hosts Maurizio Pollini on 4 March and the not-so-retired-after-all Alfred Brendel on 7 March (it's a charity concert for Comic Relief and he's credited as 'poet'). On 12 March at 6pm there's a FREE concert of Oliver Knussen's vocal works, conducted by the composer himself, with Claire Booth. A few tickets remain for countertenor Philippe Jaroussky in the Purcell Room on 23 March. On 29 March Mariss Jansons and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra are joined by Anja Harteros in a programme that includes the Eroica Symphony and Strauss's Four Last Songs.
At Wigmore Hall, Mark Padmore visits on 12 March with a Brahms and Schubert programme. Joshua Bell and Jeremy Denk appear on 26 March. Check the website for the inevitable returns.
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Today's general rehearsal for I Capuleti e i Montecchi (opening at the Royal Opera House on Monday) could hardly have gone better. A few question marks over the guys maybe, but Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca were on stunning form, Garanca in particular entirely flawless.
This role really shows Netrebko's strengths with its soaring legato phrasing - none of that hit-and-miss twiddly batsqueak stuff. Even in rehearsal she's right under Giulietta's skin. She looks gorgeous too, in a flowing cream gown - cut low for maximum bewbage but skimming gracefully over any remaining post-baby chub.
And we even got to see her in person and close-up as she made a surprise passage through the bar at the interval, still in full costume of course, with photographer and baby-toting husband Erwin Schrott in tow. The baby incidentally is utterly adorable, his thick black hair in a little mohawk and a look of permanent surprise on his face.
Elina Garanca got an even bigger ovation than Netrebko and deservedly so - tone, phrasing, flexibility, stamina - she had it all. The press photographers in the stalls went trigger-crazy at every Netrebko/Garanca clinch - I'm now waiting for the lurid lesbo headline in the Daily Mail.
Mark Elder's Bellini is a revelation, clean-limbed and twinkling. I hope the ballet-style oafish applause over the end of each scene won't be repeated on opening night though.
Netrebko and Garanca recorded in Vienna last year:
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