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.
ETA 6th December 2019:
Rewatching Le Grand Macabre after four years has rather changed my opinion. It still seems weird and sometimes hard to watch but I think I see a certain logic in it now that completely escaped me before. So the End of the World is approaching and all the Powers that Be can do is squabble, exchange scatological insults and get very, very drunk while the one sane (if rather weird) character (Gepopo) can’t find a language to communicate the enormity of what’s happening to them. Sound vaguely familiar? (Coincidentally, I’m writing this on the day that Andrew Scheer said that the Federal Government should give more heroin to the addicts in Alberta because otherwise they’ll get in a snit). Of course, in Ligeti’s version Death gets so drunk that he screws up terminating the space-time continuum but we probably won’t be so lucky. So yes the fart jokes and the raccoon on bins orchestra is still there but it now seems to me in service of something rather more profound than I previously gave it credit for. Also, Hannigan is not just brilliant vocally. It’s also, even by her standards, an amazing physical performance. (Original review under the cut).
operaramblings 