La donna del lago - Royal Opera House, 17 May 2013 (first night)
The Royal Opera House has pulled together the most perfect cast imaginable for this new production. They more than lived up to expectations, with line after line of the most thrillingly spectacular Rossini singing I've ever heard. Even a production that rivals the recent Nabucco for sheer ineptness couldn't dim their brilliance.
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The ROH officially revealed full details of their 2013-14 season this morning. As most had slipped out one way or the other already, there are only one or two surprises - not all of them welcome.
There are seven new productions, and in celebration of Richard Strauss's 150th birthday there are three of his operas.
The most exciting new production, long-known, is Stefan Herheim's Les Vepres Siciliennes, conducted by Antonio Pappano and featuring Marina Poplavskaya, Erwin Schrott, Michael Volle and the inevitable Bryan Hymel.
Claus Guth's Die Frau Ohne Schatten comes fresh(ish) from La Scala with Johan Botha, Emily Magee, Michaela Schuster and Johan Reuter, and is conducted by Semyon Bychkov.
A new (to Covent Garden) Robert Carsen Carmelites conducted by Simon Rattle features Magdalena Kozena and Anna Prohaska.
Star-wise, Juan Diego Florez is back in La fille du régiment, this time with Patrizia Ciofi, Ewa Podles - and future Downton Abbey star Dame Kiri te Kanawa.
Manon Lescaut features Jonas Kaufmann, together with Kristine Opolais and Christopher Maltman. There's a Faust revival with Joseph Calleja, Anna Netrebko, Bryn Terfel and Simon Keenlyside. Joyce DiDonato reprises her Maria Stuarda in a new Leiser/Caurier production, with Carmen Giannattasio and Charles Castronovo. Karita Mattila makes her return to Covent Garden in Keith Warner's splendid Wozzeck, also featuring Simon Keenlyside, and Christof Loy's Ariadne auf Naxos, with Jane Archibald and Ruxandra Donose.
To compensate for his multiple London no-shows perhaps, Jonas Kaufmann also gives a main stage recital on 6 April.
Conductor wise, the major shock is that baritenor Placido Domingo will be let loose on Tosca.
Continue reading "Royal Opera House 2013- 2014 season revealed " »
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James Allison
A Joyce DiDonato masterclass for Juilliard School students will be streamed live on the School's website today.
It begins at 4pm EST (9pm in the UK), and is expected to end around 21/2 hours later. The live stream will not be repeated, though it's possible extracts may appear on the School's YouTube channel at a later date.
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You may recall a rumour aired here back in February that Jonas Kaufmann would return to the Wigmore Hall on 21 April 2013.
Well, the date is confirmed - but the show has been upsized to the Royal Festival Hall, where Jonas's playmates are the Philharmonia Orchestra.
Fighting for the hearts and wallets of the London audience will be Juan Diego Flórez and Joyce DiDonato, who are at the Barbican on the same night.
This is where a free market economy gets you.
The Kaufmann date isn't on the Southbank website yet, but you can see it in a brochure called Classical Music 2012/13 which you can pick up for free from the Royal Festival Hall.
The Kaufmann concert is expected to go on sale on 17 September 2012, but see below. Also included in the brochure are some other dates which may be of interest:
***UPDATE*** the box office says some of these concerts will go on sale on 30 April (or 25 April for members) - it's not clear exactly which ones.
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Cendrillon - Royal Opera House, 5 July 2011 (first night)
Anyone who wants to take the kids to the Royal Opera House this Xmas can choose between the tubercular charms of La Traviata and a five hour operatic X-Factor in German. Meanwhile, the exquisitely child-friendly Cendrillon is saddled with 10.30 finishes and £100+ tickets at a time when many families are on holiday anyway. It goes without saying there are still plenty of seats left. At least it gets a free Big Screen showing on 13 July.
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Ariodante - Barbican, 25 May 2011
Nice singers, shame about the band. Anyone who came to hear Joyce DiDonato won't have been disappointed. Costumed as Ronnie O'Sullivan for her cross-dressing title role in this concert performance, she outclassed everyone else on stage with her clean line and crisp coloratura.
Continue reading "Ariodante at the Barbican - it's Joyce DiDonato's night" »
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Le Comte Ory - Metropolitan Opera, 5 April 2011
No, not the big screen version, the real thing. Tuesday night's performance was filmed as a dry run for the big HD event, with the cameras a distracting presence on the periphery, and what I assume was clumsy amplification lending a pronounced echo to certain voices. As so often at the Proms, I had the lurking feeling that those of us in the house were a second class audience, a mere applause machine dragged in to provide 'atmosphere' for the consecration to hard copy. And despite some truly fabulous singing, the show was never quite engaging enough to shake off the doubts.
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You can listen to the whole of Joyce DiDonato's new pants-to-pantyhose album Diva, Divo for *free* until 25 January on NPR Music, here.
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Joyce DiDonato / David Zobel - Wigmore Hall, 26 January 2010
It's not often that Rossini trumps Beethoven. But the best-known piece on this programme, Rossini's haunting Willow Song from Otello, accompanied by the ravishing harp of Lucy Wakeford, touched the heart in a way Beethoven's neatly Mozartian and little-heard early song-studies couldn't.
Delightful though Joyce DiDonato's baroque and bel canto favourites are, there's a limit to the number of times anyone wants to hear the same songs yet again in recital. But Joyce's visits to London have become so frequent it's not surprising she's running short of fresh material. This recital, billed 'Three Centuries of Amore', delved deep into the Italian song book to dust off some rarely heard songs and a few more familiar ones. All, even the most obscure, were presented from memory with a studied ease that suggested Joyce had worked long and hard to pull the programme into shape. "That's OK, I'm excited to be here too!" she kindly offered a lone applauder after her first song, turning a potential irritant into a seal of her long-standing rapport with the Wigmore audience.
Though Joyce lavished equal care and commitment on every song, there was little in the rest of the material to suggest its obscurity was undeserved. The arie antiche of Durante, Caccini, Rossi, et al are no doubt better known to voice students than audiences and long may it remain so. Joyce's immaculate technique, intelligent phrasing and natural warmth gave them every chance, but it was all as wasted as singing lessons on Jimmy Osmond. They didn't seem to draw the best from her voice, either. Perhaps it was just an extended warming-up issue, but initially her usually liquid tone was unpleasantly harsh-edged, slow to respond and occasionally short-breathed. Rossini obviously weaved some kind of spell and she finished the first half in easy, honeyed style.
The second half though was technically flawless. Swapping the crystal-trimmed sky blue Grecian gown of the first half (above) for strapless teal and black taffeta (below), Joyce tackled the limp poetry and Puccini-esque pomp of four songs by the notorious Fascist apologist Francesco Santoliquido with a conviction that the commonplace sentiments and trivial writing didn't deserve. The Ballatella of Jewish-Italian Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco provided a political counterbalance at least, but along with a handful of other forgettable songs from composers of a similar vintage, failed to raise the musical standards much.
The cheese course was perhaps the most satisfying, with Buzzi-Peccia's Lolita (or Pavarotti's Lolita as I prefer to think of it) kicking off an exotic selection that included a French serenade from Leoncavallo and a Canto arabo by Barbara Giuranna. Many singers get develop an embarrassing stiff upper lip when Latin passion is called for, but not the uninhibited Joyce. Her rhythmic precision and sensitively-wielded dynamic shading allows her to approach the material with the playfulness it requires. David Zobel's generously understated accompaniment here as throughout the evening provided a sturdy backbone.
The best, as so often, came with the encores. Voi che sapete, for which Joyce donned a "necessary" bow tie and a rondo from La donna del lago finally provided Joyce with some clearly-drawn musical characterisation on which to work her magic.
Listen to Joyce discuss the music with Radio 3's In Tune (until Monday).
The programme:
Durante Danza, danza, fanciulla gentile Pergolesi Se tu m'ami Caccini Amarilli mia bella Rossi Mio ben, teco il tormento Paisiello Nel cor piu non mi sento Rontani Or ch'io non sequo più Beethoven Hoffnung Op. 82 No. 1, Liebes-Klage Op. 82 No. 2, L’amante impatiente Op. 82 No. 3, L’amante impatiente Op. 82 No. 4, La partenza WoO124 Rossini Willow Song from 'Otello' Santoliquido L'assiolo canta, Alba di luna sul bosco, Tristezza crepuscolare, L'incontro Pizzetti Ocsuro è il ciel Toselli Serentata Donaudy O del mio amato bene Castelnuovo-Tedesco La Pastorella Ballatella Buzzi-Peccia Lolita, Serenata Spagnola Leoncavallo Serenata Francese Giuranna Canto Arabo Di Chiara La Spagnola Encores: Rossini Giusto cielo from 'Maometto Secondo' Mozart Voi che sapete from 'Le Nozze di Figaro' Rossini Tanti affetti from 'La donna del lago'
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A reader emailed me about one of Joyce DiDonato's recent blog posts in which Joyce explains the lengthy work that goes into making a recording:
The reader's email goes on to say:
"I was probably naive but I did not until recently understand that most singers' CDs are "doctored" several times until the desired degree of perfection is obtained. Arias are repeated, or at least parts of them, many times and then spliced together to produce an artificially perfect result. I had thought what you heard was more or less the same as one would hear in a concert performance, but that is not the case. It might be useful (unless I am unique in my naivete) to alert your readers to the fact that CD performances do not reflect the "real" performer as he or she would sound live".
That sounds like a good idea - consider yourselves alerted.
In case you're not aware, what Joyce describes (and I do urge you to read her whole post - it's a fascinating insight into the recording process) is by no means unique to her, or even to singers generally. Piano and other recordings are often enhanced too. Classical music's generally low sales make extensive re-recording and editing uneconomical, especially where orchestras are involved, but even so nearly all musical recordings - even 'live' ones - are touched up in one way or another.
Is this good or bad? Or to put it another way, would you rather listen to a great recording or a truthful one? Joyce DiDonato puts the performers' side across most eloquently (again, do read her whole post):
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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.
******* more photos on next page *******
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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.
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La Damnation de Faust - LSO / Gergiev - Barbican 22 September 2009
A curious evening that caught fire intermittently, but never really took off. Gergiev’s preferred preapration method – rehearse the corners, wing the straights - can produce stunning results in slow-burn symphonies. But it’s fundamentally unsuited to the desperately shoehorned ragbag of ideas (“Let's all improvise a fugue!”) that is La damnation de Faust. Faust’s final ride to the abyss truly burnt with the flames of hell, but a few manicured details aside, the first half was largely directionless and often surprisingly (for Gergiev) tentative. All the beauty and delicacy of the woodwind playing couldn’t compensate for a lack of purpose.
The problems could have been compounded when the scheduled Méphistophélès, Thomas Quasthoff, pulled out due to illness on the morning of the show. But Willard White, flown in from Copenhagen, was a magnificent replacement, despite the twinkle in his eye warning his bluster and beguilements shouldn’t be taken too seriously.
Joyce DiDonato, in a gorgeous cornflower gown and tumbling curls, sang beautifully but seemed not entirely at home in the Berlioz idiom. Her Marguerite had the radiant purity of youth but not the ardour that Susan Graham can bring to the part.
Florian Boesch almost stole the show as Brander, but Michael Schade’s Faust was a disappointment. He placed notes accurately and words carefully in his none too intelligible French, but his hard nasal tone is too unvarying and too unyielding in this part. What a pity there was so much of it. The London Symphony Chorus too had a long and tricky sing. They managed heroically, if with more gusto than finesse - for which Gergiev’s flutterfingered non-beat was not entirely to blame.
******* more photos on next page *******
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Summer is nearly over, and at last the concert calendar is filling up.
Proms and alternatives
The Proms seem to have gone on forever, but it'll all be over for another year on 12 September.
Remaining highlights include Mariss Jansons with the Concertgebouw, Riccardo Chailly with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, and the Vienna Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta and Franz Welser-Möst (replacing the scheduled Harnoncourt).
On 4 September there's an unmissable double header - first Matthias Goerne and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester in Mahler, Ligeti, Schoenberg and Strauss, then a late-night George Crumb special.
Incidentally, operatic highlights for the 2010 Proms - you heard it here first - are expected to include Die Meistersinger with Bryn Terfel, Glyndebourne's Don Giovanni, and a substantial chunk of Tristan und Isolde from the Orchestra of the 18th Century with Ben Heppner.
If you want to skip the ghastliness of the last night - something I cannot recommend too highly - alternatives include the Wigmore Hall season opener which is Die schöne Müllerin from Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis.
Or there's a FREE screening of the 1929 silent movie Piccadilly on an outside wall (don't blame me if it rains) of the Royal Festival Hall accompanied by a new score from composers Suki Mok and Ruth Chan. Following the screening, the score "will become the lynchpin of a cross-artform work incorporating dance, drama and video against a backdrop of the original silent movie".
Opera
The Royal Opera House season opens on 7 September with two concert performances of Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix conducted by Mark Elder and featuring Alessandro Corbelli alongside the hotly-tipped Eglise Gutiérrez and Stephen Costello.
Don Carlo has started rehearsals and promises to turn out even better than first time round. Semyon Bychkov conducts, Jonas Kaufmann is in the title role, and the rest of the cast is much the same as it was first time round, with Marina Poplavskaya, Simon Keenlyside and Ferruccio Furlanetto reprising his definitive Philip.
Don't expect much on stage except the singers in born-again minimalist Christof Loy's new production of Tristan und Isolde. Tristan is Ben Heppner and Isolde Nina Stemme, with Matti Salminen, Michael Volle and Sophie Koch completing the cast. Pappano conducts.
English National Opera's season opens with the much-travelled, highly-praised production of Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre by La Fura dels Baus.
The Arcola Theatre's variable but occasionally brilliant (and cheap) Grimeborn opera festival continues until 5 September. Handel, Poulenc and Mozart are included amongst the mostly contemporary works.
There's an opportunity to hear Rossini's rarely-performed Il Signor Bruschino and La Scala di Seta as well as The Rake's Progress from British Youth Opera between 4 and 12 September.
And Valery Gergiev conducts the LSO in a concert performance of La Damnation de Faust on 22 September, with a cast including Joyce DiDonato, Michael Schade, Thomas Quasthoff and Florian Boesch.
Concerts
The LSO's season opener is on 20 September, with Gergiev conducting Debussy, Dutilleux and Ravel.
At the Royal Festival Hall, Bernard Haitink conducts the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on 23 and 24 September. And on 25 and 26 September Vladimir Jurowski and the LPO tackle Mahler's 2nd Symphony. Anne Sofie von Otter visits on 30 September with songs from her Theresienstadt CD.
At Wigmore Hall, Matthias Goerne continues his Schubert marathon on 18 and 20 September (a different programme on each night).
And on 28 September it's Imogen Cooper's bus-pass birthday concert. She'll be joined by Wolfgang Holzmair, Mark Padmore, Sonia Wieder-Atherton and Paul Lewis.
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Prom 53: Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment / Norrington / Joyce DiDonato
The Proms chose to flog the anniversary composer horse to death tonight, with selections from all four of the birthday boys. The prospect of Roger Norrington giving Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony a rigorous clinical examination didn't thrill me, so I skipped the second half in favour of beer. Time and the iPlayer will reveal whether I made the right decision.
A selection from Purcell's Abdelazer suite kicked things off. Norrington oafed around, playing air-violin, spinning round to gurn into the omnipresent BBC cameras - demonstrating perfectly that by the time they're ready for the stage, players of the OAE's standard really don't need a conductor for this type of music. I'd be genuinely interested to know if anyone found his antics amusing. I was simply irritated. It's uplifting to see performers enjoying themselves on stage if it's genuine, but this came dangerously close to self-indulgence and, worse, trivialising the music.
There was less spinning and grinning for Handel's Water Music, still sounding remarkably fresh after all that's been done to it over the years. There's a reason why some works are popular, and enduringly so. My heart sank when I first saw the paired natural horns and natural trumpets, but they played, like the rest of the orchestra, quite exquisitely.
But what I'd really come to hear was Joyce DiDonato performing two Handel arias and a Haydn scena.
She swept on to the stage in a sea-green gown, not a trace of a limp following her recent accident. A radiant and rather nippy Ombra mai fù was followed by Ah, mio cor from Alcina. Not an easy one to sing cold - a web of deep and complex emotions is compressed into just ten lines and ten minutes. Joyce threw herself right into it, maybe a little awkwardly at first, but the music won over and she hit the target with a thrilling intensity.
Haydn's Scena di Berenice is not as tightly focussed, but its extended mad scene presents its own challenges - not least simulating demented abandon whilst maintaining immaculate vocal control over the swooping, skittering lines. Joyce's artistry translated Berenice's futile raging into a performance of assured and quite mesmerising brilliance. And to give Roger Norrington his due, the OAE whipped up a storm behind her as well.
Joyce's next London appearance (and her last for a while) is a concert performance of Berlioz's La damnation de Faust with the LSO next month - not to be missed.
Joyce DiDonato discusses her accident:
Joyce DiDonato sings Ah, mio cor:
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photo: Joyce DiDonato, yankeediva.blogspot.com
apart from obvious stuff like one can sing Una voce poco fa and one can't, that is?
Here's Joyce on how she managed to carry on singing with a broken leg on that unforgettable opening night of Il Barbiere di Siviglia:
And here's "fun–loving Keith, 47" who "had been knocking back glasses of Pimms and Champagne" on how Katherine Jenkins handled her own personal medical crisis at Lake Meadows in Billericay (for overseas readers, that's a field not an opera title):
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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.”
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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.
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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.
***** MANY more photos on the next page ******
Continue reading "Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Royal Opera House - opening night report" »
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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.
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