Let's start near home.
Opera Australia has added to their online operas their 2013 Carmen from the Sydney Harbour. Details here. Star performance from then ‘rising’ star Nicole Car as Michaela.
You can listen here to her brilliant ‘Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante’ – (‘I say nothing can frighten me - she’s on a container perched high over the harbour! ) Michaela has come to the den of the gypsies to rescue Don Jose from Carmen. (No subtitles – if you need to know, here are the words in English.) Our intro to Carmen here. Watch from here - and check out the other operas now available on this site. Reviews enthused. Here's Bachtrack. Also more detail here.
And at the Royal Opera House...
Fast forward four years, and Nicole Car plays Mimi in the highly controversial new production by Richard Jones of La bohème. (Not her Covent Garden debut - in 2015 they heard her Tatyana in Eugene Onegin and Micaëla in Carmen. )
ROH screens this La bohème from 4 July our time. Trailer here.
The big interest is in this new Richard Jones production – replacing the long-running Copley production. ‘Jones takes a work by the scruff of its neck and makes of it something startlingly new’, enthused the Independent. There’s an interview with Jones before it opened here. 'Jones’s replacement is not yet strong enough to fill the Royal Opera House without a stellar cast’ says this review.
Well, was it? Here's your chance to evaluate the rising star diva and also the once-radical producer - whose Glyndebourne Rosenkavalier (see below) is also offering this week.
On the reviews, Nicole Car lit up this La bohème. ‘This is a production which strives to balance ‘realism’ with romance: exquisite design details create verisimilitude, while the visible mechanisms of theatre serve to remind us that we are voyeurs,’ says opera today critic, concluding about Nicole, ‘Though she was dressed like Jane Eyre in an ugly grey frock, and later given a hideous pink bonnet by Rodolfo, Australian soprano Nicole Car was an impetuous Mimì - her bounds of energy matched by bursts of lyricism and vocal bloom. She phrased sensitively and displayed a pure, even tone across the registers.’
‘No moonlight, no magic’ says Bachtrack, calling the production ‘tepid’ because ‘he never quite gets to the emotional heart of the opera.’ But Nicole Car wins top praise. ‘The Australian lyric soprano doesn’t possess the most glamorous voice, but she uses it with great intelligence and sincerity.’ ‘Is Jones getting soft or was he under orders to deliver a keeper? There's no edge to this show; nothing off-centre or risky, nothing even vaguely ‘out there'', grumps this review. But it goes on, ‘The young Australian soprano Nicole Car has quickly established herself as a company favourite, and this exquisitely sung Mimì shows why. Her warm, bright tone, steady and agile across the range, was a joy to hear, with only the last degree of expressive freedom missing from her portrayal of love and death.’
You’ll have to watch it to make up your mind.
Comparing productions and casts is one of the luxuries of this period of livestreaming. Here’s an interesting 2018 piece about how this production – with a later cast - uses the strengths of the opera. And this week the Met offers their 2018 run of a 36-year old, Franco Zeffirelli production of La bohème (Fabiano this time with Sonya Yoncheva) - see below.
Meanwhile, over in Glyndebourne
Here's another chance to evaluate the now less radical work of Richard Jones. This week – all this week – Glyndebourne is livestreaming their 2014 production of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier for free on YouTube. The opera will be available Monday 6 July our time till Monday 13 July. Trailer here. Our intro to the opera is here.
Remember to look for the recipes to do the 'Glyndebourne experience' in style.
Good, general review in the Guardian. Most reviews liked Jones’ mix of traditional and modern. Limelight critic was interested in the way Jones uses detail. (Glyndebourne softened the production's challenges 4 years on.)
And a subplot to the reviews: the Irish mezzo who played Octavian, Tara Erraught, is another clearly rising star. But from this production she won a chorus of sexist commentary about her weight - and a major debate about the comments. There’s a summary of the attacks here. More here.
Alice Coote dashed off this letter, worth reading on the topic. As they say in the exam papers, Discuss.
And over the channel
Don't forget, as reported in previous posts, OperaVision offers Schönberg. In an extraordinary production, from the Komische Oper Berlin, Barrie Kosky has produced a new version of Schönberg's unfinished Moses und Aron. Vladimir Jurowski conducting. OperaVision is screening it - click here - for three months from June 14. Kosky talks about the production here. Thoughtful review here.
At the Met (dates are for Melbourne)
Monday, July 6 Rossini’s La Donna del Lago It came to us live in HD in 2015. As in our blog post last week, this is our Rossini fix for the week, with Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez . She sings the most famous aria here. Reviewed here thoughtfully by Operavore. And nice commentary about the music here.
Tuesday, July 7 Puccini’s La Bohème Starring Sonya Yoncheva, Susanna Phillips, Michael Fabiano, Lucas Meachem, Alexey Lavrov, and Matthew Rose, conducted by Marco Armiliato. From February 24, 2018. Rave reviews for this one - the traditional Zefferelli production with a splendid cast. Here's Bachtrack.
Wednesday, July 8 Verdi’s Il Trovatore This is the week’s archival offering, starring Éva Marton, Dolora Zajick, Luciano Pavarotti, and Sherrill Milnes, conducted by James Levine. From October 15, 1988. Wonderful Verdi music - yes, including his anvil chorus.
A successful performance of Trovatore is relatively easy, Caruso said, since all that is needed are the four greatest singers in the world. He’s not in this lineup, but the Met has gathered a good cast. NYTimes however wasn’t impressed. Here’s our notes on the opera from early in this course.
Thursday, July 9 Mozart’s Così fan tutte Susanna Phillips, Isabel Leonard, Danielle de Niese - a great lineup of women, and Danielle as Despina has a splendid time mocking them all. The ridiculous and despicable men are played by Matthew Polenzani, Rodion Pogossov, and Maurizio Muraro, conducted by James Levine. From April 26, 2014.
Friday, July 10 Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini Starring Eva-Maria Westbroek, Marcello Giordani, and Mark Delavan, conducted by Marco Armiliato. From March 16, 2013. Riccardo Zandonai wrote 13 operas, none of which most people know, all reaching ahead of verismo style. Reviews of the Met’s revival are mixed. Like this reviewer, I expect great performances from Westbroek. But NYTimes questioned if it was worth it.
Saturday, July 11 Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin Starring Anna Netrebko, Piotr Beczała, Mariusz Kwiecień. The glorious very Russian music is splendidly conducted by Valery Gergiev. From October 5, 2013: you may have seen this gorgeous production when it came to us live in HD. For an introduction to the opera, here are our notes from our meeting in 2017.
Netrebko is magnificent as Tatiana, taking the character from naïve country girl to dignified aristocrat. Listen to the extraordinary letter scene here. The blokes are pretty good too. (Here’s Onegin -Mariusz Kwiecien - telling her off for the letter.)
Sunday, July 12 Puccini’s Madama Butterfly Starring Hui He, Elizabeth DeShong, Bruce Sledge, and Paulo Szot, conducted by Pier Giorgio Morandi. From November 9, 2019.
Monday, July 13 Viewers’ Choice: Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde Another from the archives, and any performance of this opera is interesting. I'll discuss it next blog. Starring Jane Eaglen, Katarina Dalayman, Ben Heppner, Hans-Joachim Ketelsen, and René Pape, conducted by James Levine. From December 18, 1999.
Lyn - 2 July, 2020.