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 Peter Kellner
The intimacy of Richard Jones’s production of La Boheme is well conceived. However, the rooftop apartment shared by the writers and artists is rather lacking in 19th century Marseilles style. It has clean lines and beautiful fresh pinewood sets. There is no hint of atmospheric old town accommodation and even the ladder through the sky roof, constantly open to the elements, does not really make sense, nor does the smoke from the chimney when there is no working fireplace.
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.
