All tagged Nadine Benjamin
Verdi’s Luisa Miller opened in Naples at the end of 1849. It was his fifteenth opera and regarded as the beginning of his middle period. Based on Schiller’s play Intrigue and Love it never has had the popularity of some of Verdi’s other works and indeed its UK debut at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London was not until nearly 10 years after its premiere.
The original Greek Director Rodula Gaitanou, with design by Takis, produced an attractive moveable wooden panelled set that was used throughout this opera - apart from the great entrance of the Fortune Teller. In this Young Artist performance the direction was taken on by Rachel Hewer, who has worked on a number of shows at the Royal College of Music and Glyndebourne. She had Sion Corder as her Lighting Director, Steve Elias as the Movement Director and Brett Yount as the Fight Director, all from the main production. The work was updated to the 1940s, but still retained its ambiguous eccentricities and disguised assassin’s violence, which were a pre-cursor to the death of Gustavo. The area of concern was always the replacement of the cemetery scene with a hospital scene, which didn’t necessarily reflect the storyline, particularly the need for Amelia to suffer injections to cure her love. Bizarre!
Giacamo Puccini’s La boheme is probably the most popular of all operas in the classical repertoire. This 4 act opera had its world premiere in Turin in 1896 and was conducted at that time by Toscanini. 50 years later he conducted a commemorative performance in New York, which was recorded by RCA.
Porgy & Bess, the folk opera composed by George Gershwin with the libretto by the original author, DuBose Heyward and Lyricist, Ira Gershwin, was first performed in Boston in 1935. The libretto tells the story of Porgy, a black disabled street beggar living in the Charleston slums, attempting to rescue his love, Bess, from the clutches of Crown, her violent and possessive lover, and her drug dealer, Sporting Life.