Tag Archives: la fura del baus

Le siège de Corinthe

Posted on by
Reply

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.

1.bottles

Continue reading →

A black hole in Florence

Posted on by
Reply

Carlus Padrissa’s (of La fura dels baus) take on Verdi’s La forza del destino for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino is nothing if not ambitious.  He interprets this rather banal and meandering melodrama as a tale of cosmic inevitability.  Leonora and Alvaro are metaphors for two stars, which after an epic journey through time and space, will collide and form a black hole extinguishing each other.  FWIW the recording was made in June 2020 under COVID restrictions so the chorus is masked and it sounds as if the theatre is a lot less than full.

1.calatravas

Continue reading →

Brueghelland

Posted on by
1

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).

gepopoprince

Continue reading →