Here, I post my reviews and document my love of opera. I hope you enjoy it. Please feel free to comment on any of my posts or contact me if you wish to.
Have a nice stay!
David Buchler
All tagged Alasdair Elliott
Puccini’s ‘disaster’ Madam Butterfly premiered at La Scala Milan in February 1904 and was so badly received that it wasn’t until the summer of 1904 that a second version was more successful. Thereafter there were more revisions until the 1907 fifth revision, which became today’s ‘standard version’.
ENO & Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre teamed up to provide a musical feast – literally – of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel & Gretel. Directed by the long-term Director of the Regent’s Park Opera Timothy Sheader and supported by the ‘Tony Award’ nominated, Peter McKintosh, as the Set and Costume Designer, Lizzi Gee as the Movement Director and Oliver Fenwick as the Lighting Director. The team really produced a fun staging culminating in a great candy house with lots of colourful gingerbread men.
It is incredible when in an all-male opera the keenest applause at curtain call is reserved for a lady – the female Director, Deborah Warner. She directs a new production for the ROH, in conjunction with opera houses, both in Madrid and Rome, where this production has already premiered. It is the ROH’s first new staging of this work since Zambello’s 1995 staging. Warner is becoming a bit of a Britten specialist with her brilliant Death in Venice for ENO in memory, with others to follow suit. Here she brings the 1797 timeframe up to the modern era, with costumes by Chloe Obolensky and sets by Michael Levine to match. The abstract staging is based around moving platforms all surrounded by rigging, which at appropriate times move to produce varying levels on the stage, reflecting the different decks of the ship, HMS Indomitable.
