Tag Archives: mansouri

Meyerbeer in the museum

Posted on by
Reply

Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine was a huge hit in Paris, London and New York when it premiered in 1865.  I’m not sure why.  It has all of the things that make Meyerbeer seem very dated and not as much of the good stuff as Les Huguenots, or even Dinorah.  It’s ostensibly about Vasco de Gama but that’s just a peg to pin a love triangle and a bunch of exoticism on.  Are we actually supposed to believe that the Portugese wanted to find a way around the Cape to find out what was there?  It would have been a lot easier to get hold of a copy of Herodotus.  It’s also long.  Even with cuts it runs well over three hours in the version recorded at San Francisco Opera in 1988.

1.room Continue reading →

Gentle Death, I embrace you

Posted on by
3

1.urbainIt’s 1990 and Dame Joan Sutherland is retiring.  Australian Opera decide to stage Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots as a farewell gala.  In some ways it’s an odd choice as the Sutherland character, Marguerite de Valois, only appears in two of the five acts of an opera that’s rather long despite cuts.  Still, as a vehicle for an ageing coloratura it’s not a bad choice.  The production is by Lotfi Mansouri so there is nothing to get in the way of the plot and, by the same token, nothing much to think about.  It’s also, equally characteristically, quite dark in places.  Everything then rests on the performances.  Continue reading →

Joan Sutherland on form

Posted on by
4

A while back I reviewed the train wreck that is the CBC recording of Joan Sutherland in Norma. Three years later the Canadian Opera Company and the CBC tried again with a recording of Donizetti’s Anna Bolena. As a recording and a production it has its limitations but it’s not a disaster and is enjoyable in many ways.

Continue reading →