Intermezzo

Il turco in Italia returns to Royal Opera House

Il turco in Italia - Royal Opera House, 8 April

Il turco in Italia, it has to be said, is not Rossini's strongest work musically. There are endless yards of tiddly-pom, and even the arias are not his most melodic or memorable. The reason it's so widely-performed has to lie in the ingenious plot and superb dramatic pacing.

A strong production can paper over the weaknesses, and as they've demonstrated with their Covent Garden La Cenerentola and Il barbiere di Siviglia, Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser have a special affinity for Rossini's cruel wit. For Il turco in Italia, here on its second run, the broad-stroked humour is again echoed in the bold colours and sharp lines of the early sixties, where Aleksandra Kursak's gloved and girdled Fiorilla is fomenting her own sexual revolution, regardless of her hapless husband Alessandro Corbelli's protests.

Turco Turco gobble gobble

Sloooow ticket sales for Il Turco in Italia have forced the Royal Opera House to fall back on desperate ENO-style measures.

For one night only - 5 April (that's Easter Monday) - stalls tickets are reduced from £120-£150 down to a mere £30. 

It's a fizzy Leiser/Caurier production with a promising cast (Aleksandra Kurzak, Colin Lee, Alessandro Corbelli, Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, Thomas Allen) and well worth catching, especially at that price.  

Book over the phone on +44 (0)20 7304 4000, quoting 'Il Turco Sun Offer'. And hurry! They're going fast.

(thanks to Chris for the tip)

Royal Opera House 2009/10 season - all the details

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) makes its first visit to Covent Garden in March with Christianne Stoijn, Sara Mingardo and Christine Schäfer. Baroque specialist Ivor Bolton conducts.

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.

Il Turco in Italia in Munich

Il Turco in Italia - Bayerische Staatsoper, Prinzregententheater, Munich, 29 July 2007
(Münchner Opernfestspiele 2007)

This was the first time I'd been to an opera at 11 in the morning - and Sunday morning at that. The start time led to some dress code confusion. Quite a few were in their regular opera wear - which in Munich includes full evening dress. Elsewhere there were sports sandals and polo shirts.

Perhaps it wasn't so surprising the orchestra started rather sluggishly. As the production started to get the laughs it was seeking, things picked up musically.

Christof Loy's setting is contemporary, but other than that, there's no grand production concept. A series of detailed visual gags supplement the comedy of Rossini's opera. The best set piece was the opening one. It's set in a gypsy camp, here interpreted as a small modern caravan, which aided by a concealed trapdoor spilled out an endless stream of people.

Later on, the Turk of the title entered on a flying carpet. Doors opened in the painted landscape backdrop to reveal a cocktail cabinet. The burly male chorus pranced around the party scene in elegant ballgowns. Trousers were ripped off to reveal boxing shorts. It was that sort of production. And it was rounded off with some heavy-duty hamming from the cast.

The story is a simple one. A Turk arrives in Italy, and has to choose between the affections of the flirtatious housewife Fiorilla, and his former lover, now living with the gypsies, Zaida. It's complicated by competition for Fiorialla from her husband and her current lover, and by an interfering poet, Prosdocimo, who is trying to manipulate events so that he can write a play around them.

Fiorilla (Alexandrina Pendatchanska) gets some very tricky coloratura, which she dispatches competently enough, but mostly without the consonants which would make it intelligible. Her delivery is effortful, and her very wide vibrato grated after a while, but she went down well with the audience.

David Alegret as her lover Narciso was the sole tenor of the piece. He has a light, rather reedy sound well suited to the part, but unfortunately it didn't always carry well, even in the small Prinzregententheater.

Roberto De Candi as Prosdocimo was a Schubert lookalike with an agile bass, and a natural comic able to raise a laugh simply by the way he walked on to the stage.

The Turk, Selim, was played by one of the few Italians on the stage, Simone Alaimo. Like Carlos Chausson as Geronio, he wrung every drop of humour out of his part. They took advantage of their age and portliness with some ridiculous posturing in their squabbling over Fiorilla. Chausson's immaculate quickfire aria O sorte deplorabile deservedly got a huge ovation.

Despite being cruelly wrenched from my bed at an unearthly 9.30 (hey, it's Sunday), I was kept not only awake but smiling. And I didn't even realise I'd missed lunch till the show was over. Not a bad way to pass a Sunday morning.