L’aio nell’imbarazzo (A tutor in a jam) is a Donizetti comedy that was popular in its day; both in its original version and revised as Don Gregorio. It’s now received a new scholarly edition that attempts to get back as far as possible to the original. That edition was used for a production directed by Francesco Micheli at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo in 2022 and filmed for video release.
The Enchantress (sometimes translated as The Sorceress) is a rather infrequently performed 1887 opera by Tchaikovsky. It got a production in Frankfurt in 2022 with an interesting cast. Asmik Grigorian plays the title character; Kuma or Nastasya, and Iain MacNeil, late of this parish, is Prince Nikita. It’s the first time I’ve come across him since he moved to Germany.
It’s pretty difficult to judge whether or not a high concept production of Wagner’s Ring cycle is going to work or not just from Das Rheingold but I thought Dmitri Tcherniakov’s production for Staatsoper unter den Linden recorded in 2022 was pretty promising. His world is a large research complex designated ESCHE for reasons that aren’t clear. The time period seems to be 1970s or thereabouts. The research is essentially psychological and the characters are variously executives, scientists and experimental subjects.
Le siège de Corinthe is a 1826 reworking, for Opéra de Paris, of Rossini’s earlier Maometto II so besides, of course, being in French it is restructured as a three act tragédie lyrique with a substantial ballet in Act 2. The plot is straightforward enough. It’s the mid fifteenth century. Mahomet II is besieging Corinth but unknown to him the king, Cléomène’s, daughter Palmyra is the girl he fell in love with during an incognito trip to Athens. Cléone has promised Palmyra to his top warrior Néoclès. After Corinth falls Mahomet promises clemency to the Greeks as long as Palmyra marries him. She agrees and is cursed as a traitor by her father. The marriage doesn’t happen for various reasons and Palmyra flees to the camp of the once again revolting Greeks. When they are defeated for a second time she commits suicide rather than submitting to Mahomet.
Ferrucio Busoni’s Doktor Faust was left unfinished at the composer’s death in 1924 and completed by Philip Janarch. Further sketches for the work by the composer were fleshed out and incorporated into the score by Anthony Beaumont in 1982. That more complete version was performed at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2023 and recorded for video.
Nielsen’s Maskarade is a comic opera to a Danish libretto based on an 18th century play. The version given in Frankfurt in 2021, and recorded for video, updates it to contemporary times and uses a rather racy German translation by Martin Berger. It’s really rather fun!
The annual Donizetti festival in Bergamo makes a point of resurrecting less well known Donizetti operas. In 2022 Chiara e Serafina; Donizetti’s first commission for La Scala, got the treatment. It’s got some very decent music if you like early Donizetti. The Sestetto in Act 2 is particularly well constructed and it’s generally tuneful and allows the singers to strut their stuff.
The title of this review of a 2022 recording of Rameau’s Platée is prompted by the fact that I’ve rarely seen this much high quality dance included in an opera production. It’s really spectacular. But back to basics. Platée is a comic opera of 1745. The production filmed in 2022 is by Laurent Pelly and was making its fifth run at the Palais Garnier. There’s an earlier video release of the 2002 run.
How to portray a group of people obsessed with music in a rather formalistic and rules driven way like the characters in Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg? The directorial team of Jossi Wieler, Sergio Morabits and Anna Viebrock, for their production at t6he Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2022, decided that the answer was to set it in a Conservatory.
So here goes with a video recording of one of those 19th century Paris operas that nowadays, if they get done at all, tend to get done in an inferior Italian version. We are talking Donizetti’s 1840 opera La favorite written for l’Opéra de Paris. The recording is of a production given at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo in 2022 and it’s clear that both director and conductor have gone to some lengths to get as close to the spirit of the work as possible. I think by and large they succeed.
operaramblings 