Get half price tickets for Rolando at the Royal Festival Hall on 15 May with a Time Out offer.
The discount is only valid on the bottom three price bands (no front stalls), and you don't get to pick your seat. Prices after discount run from £21 to £34.
Time Out also have a half price offer for ENO's Wozzeck (dress circle and upper circle seats only).
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Rupert '1-star' Goold has decided against a return to ENO, where he made his much-derided opera-directing debut with Turandot in 2009. Apparently he is prioritising his film commitments instead. Opera's loss is cinema's......whatever.
Replacing him as director of Wozzeck next May is Carrie Cracknell, former artistic director of the Gate Theatre - yet another theatrical luminary with no evidenced interest, let alone experience, in opera.
We shall see.
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Wozzeck - Metropolitan Opera, 6 April 2011(season premiere)
The most moving moment in this brief evening came before a note had been played. As James Levine entered the pit for the first time in over a month, it seemed as if the cheers and applause might never stop. Still visibly suffering from the chronic back pain that sidelined him recently, the Met's revered maestro turned to acknowledge the audience with his hand over his heart. The scenario played out again at the end of the evening. Levine remained in the pit for his ovation, presumably too frail to ascend to the stage for a bow.
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Here are few of the posters the Bavarian State Opera plastered around Munich's opera house last week (more here):
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Wozzeck - Bayerische Staatsoper, Nationaltheater, Munich, 17 July 2009
Michael Volle's magisterial performance as Wozzeck is the main strength and the main weakness of Andreas Kriegenburg's production, here in its first revival after opening to ecstatic reviews last November. Wozzeck is a man who has somehow sunk to the bottom of life's bucket. Hapless and hopeless, crushed, humiliated and abused by all around him, he is sustained only by his love for Marie and their young son.
Yet despite all the intelligence and musicality of Volle's singing and all the daring and commitment of his no-holds-barred acting, his rich, commanding baritone suggests one of life's winners.
His rage is terrifying rather than impotent, his creeping lunacy is scary not sad. The production design doesn't help - Wozzeck and his family are sturdy, upright and 'normal', while all around them are seen through Wozzeck's eyes as hideous Grosz-style caricatures. No dramatic issues can detract from the sheer beauty and fluency of Volle's singing, but Angela Denoke was the truly tragic heart of the production. She sang Marie with a compelling humanity, her gleaming soprano locating that elusive combination of vulnerability and sheer dramatic power.
Whether as opera, play or otherwise, Wozzeck/Woyzeck seems remarkably resistant to any treatment thrown at it, and despite the alleged 'difficulty' of the music, Berg's version has the power to captivate even cynics and neophytes. Kriegenburg takes full advantage of this licence, and his production is a marvellously-sustained piece of theatre, along with the previous night's Ariadne auf Naxos one of the best nights I've had in an opera house for ages. The stage is submerged beneath water - Wozzeck's world is cold, damp and supremely uncomfortable. It's supremely evocative - the only criticism is that making an inch or so of water resemble more profound depths involved a lot of intrusively noisy splashing.
Above this, clever lighting makes Marie's grubby room look suspended as if hovering weightless. Wozzeck's son follows him round, a mute leech clutching desperately at his father, breaking away now and again to comment on the drama in stark black graffiti. A black-suited herd slump around, sporting signs demanding work or money, sometimes bearing the weight of the set quite literally on their shoulders. The doctor is strapped and splinted like the result of one of his own experiments; the captain sports a grotesque semi-naked fat suit. If it doesn't quite add up in any rational way, that's because what's set out is Wozzeck's own distorted perception.
Kent Nagano conducted with grace and ease and a forensic eye to detail. He finessed the abrupt gear changes with a light touch, never losing momentum. And he came fully prepared - a stout pair of wellies ensured he could take his deserved place at the curtain call.
As fate would have it, the week's oppressively hot weather gave way to a tumultous thunderstorm as the opera drew to a close. Nobody dared brave it - as the black skies cracked open above, the seasonally-dressed audience crowded into the foyer and on to the stairs to watch Maximilianstrasse turning into a river even deeper than the puddle on stage.
If only I'd had Kent Nagano's foresight. Instead I was forced into a post-opera first. I put up my brolly, slipped off my Alaïas - and waded home barefoot.
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