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 Michael Levine
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’.
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.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, the opera composed by Benjamin Britten was set to a libretto, adapted by both the Composer and the Singer, Peter Pears, from the play by William Shakespeare. It was premiered in 1960 at the Aldeburgh Festival.
