Intermezzo

More ENO half price deals

ENO. Half price. Yet another offer.

LondonTheatreDirect.com have a very limited allocation of seats for La bohème, The Barber of Seville and Medea in all areas of the theatre at half price (plus £3 fee).

Ignore the 'save £29' and similar banners on the site, because most of the discounts are even higher. Just pick the number of seats you want for the selected date, and you are shown exactly which seat numbers are available, and how much they cost. Brilliant.

Bear in mind that, as ever, bigger discounts will probably be available on the day at the TKTS booth (availability not guaranteed).

Thanks to reader Grahame for spotting.

ENO's Barber and Boheme at half price

Here's something to make Jonathan Miller even grumpier. Get 50% off seats for his two upcoming ENO revivals, La bohème and The Barber of Seville, with DiscountTheatre.com.

Their ticket allocation includes Stalls, Dress Circle and Upper Circle, though not all areas are available for all dates. You don't get to pick your seats, but you are told exactly which ones have been allocated.

Bookings must be made by 2.30pm on Friday 15 February.

Thanks to reader Alison for spotting.

More ENO half price offers

My blog runneth over with ENO discount deals.  Right now they seem even more plentiful than usual - no doubt the recent financial revelations have increased the pressure to fill seats.

The Ambassador Theatre Group are the latest organisation to join the merry band of cut-price ticket providers, with half price offers on the new Peter Konwitschny La traviata and the revival of Jonathan Miller's The Barber of Seville.

All seating areas are included in the offer (even stalls), and all dates after 21 February. Seats are picked for you on a 'best available' basis, but you are shown exactly which seat numbers have been picked before you pay. It appears ATG have been given a limited allocation, as not all areas are available on every night.

Thanks to reader Alex for spotting.

Il barbiere di Hackney

The Barber of Seville - English Touring Opera - Hackney Empire, 8 March 2012

ETO's new Barber of Seville is sung in English. Perhaps that's why its traditional styling owes more to Regency London than olde Spain.

Daringly, there are no surtitles; fortunately, the ETO cast sing far more clearly than their ENO counterparts. That's no mean compliment when you consider the yards of fioriture involved. The experiment makes a powerful case for doing without. Comic timing is preserved. Attentiveness is obligatory - proper listening in other words. The translation sneaks in a few explanatory phrases where the original text doesn't quite follow the action, so it's ideal for newcomers (of which there were plenty in the Hackney audience).

Barenboim expands his repertoire

On Sunday 2 October Daniel Barenboim will - for the first time ever in his long career - conduct an opera by Rossini.

Ruth Berghaus's ancient and much-loved production of Il barbiere di Siviglia prefaces the Berlin Staatsoper's season in a special show modelled on the anteprima (=  remarketed dress rehearsal) successfully introduced at Barenboim's other house, La Scala.  It's open only to members of the patrons society and under-35s, who can buy seats for just 7 euros.

Il barbiere di Siviglia returns to the Royal Opera House

Il barbiere di Siviglia - Royal Opera House, 18 January 2011 (first night)

As revivals go, this proved to be one of the better ones, though perhaps it was inevitable that the first night wouldn't quite live up to the promise of the bizarrely effective general-rehearsal-that-wasn't, not to mention the perfection of the previous revival.

The Barber's Curse strikes Covent Garden again

Last time round, the leading lady broke her leg  - on stage, on the first night. This time, the show hasn't even opened and already disaster has struck Covent Garden's Il barbiere di Siviglia.

The Barber of Islington

The Barber of Seville (or Salisbury) - King's Head Theatre, 6 October 2010

If there's one work that seems designed to survive the pub opera treatment, it's The Barber of Seville. Its strengths lie in tunes, jokes and neatly-woven plot, so replacing the orchestra with a dodgy upright piano takes surprisingly little away.

Robin Norton-Hale's new English version shifts the action from Seville to Regency Bath. She takes the odd liberty with the translation, but does without the irritating neologisms beloved of many updaters. Slower-moving and repetitive sections have been condensed or snipped out. A few small additions strengthen characterisations, with the Count's womanising ways and the Doctor's social inferiority complex clearly drawn. In the intimate surroundings of the King's Head (size: a generous drawing-room) operatically-scaled caricature simply wouldn't work; here everyone is human-sized.

The singing falls somewhere between Covent Garden and bathtub standard, but every word is crystal-clear, which is more than you can say for most opera in English. As for dramatic skills and comic timing, this cast beat the average international opera star hands down.

I'm slightly concerned about Opera Up Close's threat of a pub Lulu somewhere down the line (stick to G&S, please), and I'm not convinced the founders' lofty aspirations of bringing opera - real opera - to the masses have been (or ever can be) met with a production of this sort. But it's a great evening out.

The Barber of the Met

Il Barbiere di Siviglia Metropolitan Opera, 31 October 2009

Can the Met please everyone at once? Come to that, can it please anyone?

I found Bartlett Sher's Il Barbiere di Siviglia beyond conservative, sitting comfortably within the tradition of tradition the Met is famous for. Not just the generic theatrical-historical costumery but the unfunny, old-fashioned, overstated gesticulation and buffoonery. Barbiere is a comedy, but the characters are not in on the joke. When they act with anything less than deadly seriousness, the show simply falls flat, as this one did all too frequently. (Maurizio Benini's over-polished conducting didn't help on that score either.) A stage director (Kathleen Smith Belcher) was credited, but did she do anything more than shove the singers into the correct position?

But a 25-year Met veteran I spoke to found it "modern" and "trashy". "Where is Seville?" he asked. He expected to see a lavishly reproduced simulacrum of olde-Spain. Instead there was a platform tower, a few orange trees and a handful of freestanding doors, all wheeled around by costumed stagehands. And perhaps as a nod to the past, a reluctant donkey.

I'm not sure who the production is aimed at, but landing in-between intelligent musical theatre (like Covent Garden's Leiser and Caurier production) and the singing picture approach leaves few satisfied - a mistake apparently repeated with the Met's recent Tosca. It's not pulling the customers in either - there were a surprising number of empty seats for this Saturday matinee.

Of course this is above all a singers' opera, and there were no real complaints on that account. Franco Vassallo's rambunctious Figaro and John Del Carlo pompous Bartolo hit the button, though Roberto Scandiuzzi's Don Basilio was a caricature too far.

But Joyce DiDonato's perky Rosina was the predictable standout. Despite Benini's zippy tempos, her coloratura was effortless and precise, and she pinged out those top notes like pearls. Barry Banks, several distracting inches shorter than DiDonato in her piled up Bette Midler wig, never seemed the Almaviva of her dreams. His runs are smudgy at speed, but his bright, nasal, uningratiating tone cuts easily through the auditorium. He gets bonus points for not just tackling the fearsome cabaletta to Cessa di più resistere, but pretty much nailing it.

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the genius of stupidity

A reminder that Radio 3 broadcast a live recording of the Royal Opera House's recent, unutterably brilliant  Il barbiere di Siviglia on Saturday - available on the iPlayer until the end of the week.

Skip the first 25 minutes if you're not interested in explanations and interviews.

FF FTW

The great Ferruccio Furlanetto is profiled by Martin Kettle in the Guardian, where his golf handicap is revealed.

Five! (Which means he plays golf nearly as well as he sings).

Here he is with La calumnia from Il barbiere di Siviglia in 2007 at La Fenice:

Joyce DiDonato casts away

Nick Kimberley of the Evening Standard reviews last night's performance of ll Barbiere di Siviglia, the first show Joyce DiDonato has performed in a wheelchair since breaking her leg on stage on Saturday night. She accessorised her new wheels with a bright pink cast to match the shoe on her good foot.

Joyce also shared a few words backstage after the show:

“If Moshe and Patrice had said before we started, ‘We’re going to put you in a wheelchair’, I would have declared it pure Eurotrash and stormed out. I got introduced to my wheelchair at about 5 o’clock and had just half an hour of preparation onstage beforehand. In the story, Rosina is caged; the beautiful thing is that tonight that became something quite literal: I felt trapped in the wheelchair. That helped dramatically. This was one of the most thrilling nights I’ve ever spent in the theatre.”

News from the Barber's chair

Joyce DiDonato confirms on her blog that she WILL perform the remaining Barbiere shows at the Royal Opera House - starting with tomorrow night, 7 July - in a WHEELCHAIR!

Check http://yankeediva.blogspot.com for all the latest updates straight from Joyce herself.

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Juan Diego Flórez is the new Simon Russell Beale. Official. So realistic was his slapstick acting that he convinced Tim Ashley of the Guardian that, "In act two, meanwhile, her Almaviva, Juan Diego Flórez, narrowly missed being clobbered by the lid of an open grand piano." Nope, it was all in character, as he thinks his 'singing teacher' disguise is about to get rumbled. He did exactly the same at the rehearsal.

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Despite having a correspondent in the house, the perenially fact-lite Guardian managed to cock up their report on Joyce's accident. According to them, she slipped "during a scene change towards the end of the first act" - when it was actually mid-scene and mid-act. (So - again - why should we trust you on the big news, Guardian?)

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Reviews in so far from Edward Seckerson in the Independent (published before I even got out of bed on Sunday morning, what a pro), Michael Church in the Independent blog, WhatsonStage.com, MusicOMH.com, MusicalCriticism.com, The Stage, Bloomberg and Boulezian blog.

Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Royal Opera House - opening night report

Il barbiere di Siviglia - Royal Opera House, 4 July 2009 (first night)

What a night!

I won't dwell on Joyce DiDonato's painful accident (see here for the gruesome details). But I will again marvel at her incredible willpower and determination to forge on and deliver an amazing performance, worthy of Rosina herself. She sang just as brilliantly as she did at the final rehearsal, with guts and panache. Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier's rigorously choreographed direction placed her every single note in dramatic context - each one of those trills and turns is linked to the action. And she didn't let them down, even in the tempesta scene where she had to swipe all the furniture to the floor in anger - not easy with a crutch in hand.

But it wasn't just Joyce who made the evening so special. It was an incredible performance all round, one of the greatest I can remember at Covent Garden. Perfectly cast, brilliantly sung from top to bottom, played with freshness and precision - and a production which for all its crayon-bright buffoonery digs intelligently right to the heart of the work. And thigh boots too! What more can a girl ask?

Juan Diego Flórez was perfection itself, his Ecco ridente just meltingly delicious, his comic timing superb. And he - deservedly - got the longest ovation I've ever heard for that snake-pit of fiendish coloratura, Cessa di più resistere. Five minutes? I didn't count. So long that Alessandro Corbelli, staying in character as Bartolo, got a few more laughs by checking his watch.

In any other cast, Corbelli and the great Ferruccio Furlanetto would have stolen the show. Corbelli's unbelievably precise patter in Un dottor della mia sorte and his brilliantly-detailed faux-bad singing lesson aria were a masterclass in buffo technique. And his bumbling avuncular characterisation had the great advantage of making the ending far more credible.

It makes me happier to see the name of Ferruccio Furlanetto on a cast list than any number of overpaid divas. His Don Basilio was an awe-inspiring and utterly original creation, bizarre and faintly sinister, sure to give any children lucky enough to attend the show a few bad dreams. His La calunnia - a brilliantly choreographed assault on Bartolo's person and sanity that ended with the lanky Furlanetto's twisted round Corbelli's humpty-dumpty form - was simply one of the greatest performances I've ever seen on stage.

The late sub Pietro Spagnoli was an able and amiable Figaro. The voice is not particularly refined, but it's big and warm, and he held his own amongst his starry colleagues.

His finest moment came early on in the evening. Entering from the back of the auditorium, he made his way down the aisle singing Largo al factotum, pausing here and there to menace the expensively-seated customers with his tools, eliciting a mixture of genuine amusement and nervous smiles. Then - golazo! Was it coincidence, a wager, or is he really chasing that one-star review? - he waved his scissors in the face of Britain's grumpiest opera critic - who is clearly no fan of audience participation. Talk about an f-off glare - I thought I'd die laughing.

Even the smaller parts were brilliantly taken. The prosthetically-enhanced Jennifer Rhys-Davies was hilarious as Berta, though the ending of her aria shouldn't be nearly as funny as the directors make it. She is after all singing about how love has passed her by, one of the few moments where emotional truth pierces through the rigid stylisation the opera owes to its French origins in the drama of Beaumarchais. And Changhan Lim really made a mark as Fiorello - he can sing (a strong, warm baritone), he can act, and, importantly, he didn't look outclassed sharing a stage with Juan Diego Flórez.

Finally, Tony Pappano, managing both the orchestra and the harpsichord continuo (how did he find the time to rehearse with everything he's been doing recently?) practically reinvented the score. Light, witty, fresh, perfectly balanced, and as minutely detailed as the production itself. It's one of the finest things he's ever done at Covent Garden. At last we could hear what Beethoven raved about.

Standing ovation? You bet:

***** MANY more photos on the next page ******

Joyce DiDonato injures leg; finishes Barbiere on crutches

We all like a little drama, don't we? That's what opera's all about. Joyce DiDonato went well beyond the call of duty providing it at the Royal Opera House tonight in Il barbiere di Siviglia.

Shortly after finishing Una voce poco fa, alone on the bare stage, she walked to the corner and her leg just seemed to give way under her. There was nothing to trip over - perhaps she just slipped.

She hauled herself up and carried on singing, but it was clear from her limp that all was not well, and her next appearance was with a walking stick, still limping.

A ROH spokesman announced before the second half that she'd sprained her ankle but was going to carry on despite the pain. And she did - with all her usual sparkle - wielding a flower-bedecked crutch as if it were just some fashion accessory. After all, that's what Rosina would do, isn't it?

She horsed around at the curtain call, waving the crutch in the air, but she didn't look her usual happy self.

No word at this stage whether she'll complete the rest of the run, but I suspect from this showing she'll try her best. Even if it means a wheelchair. 

*** Lots more about the show tomorrow! ***

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UPDATE - Joyce has in fact BROKEN HER LEG!

She was diagnosed with a fractured fibula (calf bone)and she's now in a cast. This is an incredibly painful injury - a friend of mine recently suffered the same break and nearly passed out with the pain before the ambulance arrived (and had difficulty even sitting comfortably in her ROH seat two weeks after the event). So how Joyce managed to soldier on for three hours is a mystery. Talk about a trouper!

More details - and photos - from Joyce herself on her blog, here.

 

 

the Cheese has landed on the Macaroni

 

There were tears all round when Simon Keenlyside pulled out of the Royal Opera House's forthcoming Il barbiere di Siviglia. But on the showing of today's dress rehearsal, I don't think many will be disappointed by his replacement, Pietro Spagnoli.

His Figaro is a broad-brush portrayal, in keeping with Leiser and Caurier's cartoony production. Spagnoli is a generous performer with a big voice and great comic timing.  He's a less than central presence most of the time, but who wouldn't be when sharing the stage with Joyce DiDonato, Juan Diego Flórez, Alessandro Corbelli and the great Ferruccio Furlanetto (an alarmingly creepy Don Basilio)? All on top form I should add.

JDF especially. His singing has a range of colour and expression I haven't heard from him before - if he can manage another Cessa di più resistere like today's, he won't be allowed home without an encore. And he has blossomed into a fine comic actor, at last playing to his colleagues instead of the audience. He didn't put a foot wrong. His drunken soldier and upright singing teacher were beautifully detailed.

Detail was a hallmark of the production this time round. Leiser and Caurier have clearly thought and rehearsed every move through. Comedy needs serious preparation. I seem to recall a few longueurs and some over-the-top caricaturing when this production first appeared. All gone. It is simply funnier than it has any right to be.

Pappano, playing the harpsichord continuo as well as conducting, is completely on their wavelength - light, nuanced, alert. 

Even better than La traviata. Yes, really.