Monteverdi madness

It's not staged at the Royal Opera House, and it doesn't use the ROH orchestra, singers or directors,  but it's still a 'Royal Opera House production'.

I'm talking about Monteverdi's L’Orfeo, which the ROH announced today is to be staged in January 2015 at the Roundhouse. It will be directed by the former RSC head (and opera newcomer) Michael Boyd and conducted by Christian Curnyn, who will bring in his specialist period band.

Whether this is a one-off or whether, following L'Ormindo, the ROH has imperialist designs on the pub opera market remains to be seen.

Comments

[Vecchio John]

It's called "branding" and the Royal Opera has the marketing resources to promote the event.

[SJT]

Isn't this what animals do up lamp-posts etc.?

[Richard]

Kaspar Holten says in the programme for L'Ormindo that it's difficult to do baroque and early opera in the main house, and they want to use the Linbury for contemporary work so they are looking at new venues and partnerships in order to fo early music

So we can expect to see more of this in "exciting smaller venues around London"
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Intermezzo replies - Until they've squeezed out every other opera company from the capital, no doubt.

[SJT]

"La Calisto" worked perfectly well in the house. What doesn't work is something like "Die Frau ohne Schatten", simply too big orchestrally - it's scored for a band of 150+, of which the ROH scraped together considerably less than two-thirds - overwhelming not just the acoustic ceiling, but all the available space.