Intermezzo

Opera in Vogue

American Vogue comes over all operatic this month.

The online edition takes a look at the photogenic Kristine Opolais, currently starring in La rondine at the Met.

Don't expect any hardcore musical analysis though.

Hair (“We try to make the curls fall well, for all the parties she’ll attend after the show”) and makeup (“As HD has come into play, the audience has wanted a more natural look”) are attended to with the rigour and expertise you would expect from America's foremost fashion mag.

The print edition features a piece on Alba Clemente's fabulous costume designs for New York City Opera's Powder Her Face.

Madama Butterfly flaps again

Madama Butterfly Royal Opera House, 25 June 2011

Some of the critiques of Christopher Alden's A Midsummer Night's Dream might kid you momentarily into thinking there's something new about a manipulative paedo on the opera stage.

And then you remember Madama Butterfly.

Oh Deer

Rusalka - Nationaltheater Munich, 23 October 2010

Martin Kušej's Rusalka is no fairy tale, though I wonder if that was made clear beforehand to the parents of the sweet little girls I saw in the foyer before the show, all done up in their party best. Let's just say that two hours of rape, incest and disembowelled animals later, they were nowhere to be seen.

Maybe it should carry a warning sticker, but Kušej's dark fable includes some of the most powerful and original work I've seen for some time. Like many an ambitious retelling, it doesn't quite entirely hang together, but it does reveal a weight and contemporary relevance that no mermaid story could.