Tag Archives: verdi

Un giorno di regno

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Belle Cao2023

Belle Cao

VOICEBOX:Opera in Concert opened their 50th anniversary season at the Jane Mallett Theatre with the first of three Verdi rarities.  Un giorno di regno was Verdi’s second opera and it premiered at La Scala in 1840 to no great acclaim.  It’s a curiously old fashioned piece for its time.  Perhaps the fact that it sets a libretto written over twenty years earlier accounts for some of that.  It’s very much a bel canto work.  It’s sort of a comedy though it’s not actually all that funny; being largely concerned with machinations about who marries whom played around a somewhat implausible impersonation of the King of Poland by a minor French aristocrat.  It’s no sillier than many Donizetti operas but perhaps by 1840 that formula was wearing rather thin. Continue reading →

Ernani

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Ernani is an early Verdi opera (1844) and it’s not performed that often (16th most performed Verdi opera according to Operabase).  It was given at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2022, in a production by Leo Muscato, which was recorded for video release.  How you react to it may partly depend on how you feel about bel canto operas on (more or less) serious themes.  This is an opera about unrequited love and revenge (lots of revenge) but, in typical bel canto style, the music doesn’t always fit the mood.  So here we open on a prelude where Ernani’s bandit gang are sorting out the corpses from their latest skirmish while the orchestra plays a rather jolly tune, then they break into a drinking song and then Ernani enters and sings a rather lovely cavatina.  There are places where the music is darker and some of it is really rather good.  In particular there are some strong duets for Ernani and his (everyone’s) love interest Elvira.  Overall, I rather liked it musically.

1.bandits

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News

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phantombirdVOICEBOX:Opera in Concert announced their 2023/24 season.  It’s quite interesting; three Verdi rarities:

  • Un giorno di regno on November 25th 2023
  • Ernani on February 25th 2024
  • La battaglia di Legnano on April 7th 2024

And for something completely different, Alice Ho’s The Phantom Bird of Han, performed by Symphony Nova Scotia, is now available on Youtube.  Definitely worth a listen!

The (evil) life of a baritone

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English baritone Roland Wood, accompanied by Simone Luti, gave a rather unusual, themed, recital n the RBA on Tuesday lunchtime.  It was structured around the typical career path of a baritone and was narrated engagingly by Wood with lots of fun being had with the traditional rivalry between tenors (useless wimps who always get the girl) and baritones (evil sociopaths who never do).

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A convincing Rigoletto

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Oliver Mears’ production of Verdi’s Rigoletto recorded at Covent Garden in 2021 looks and feels like the work of a British theatre director.  There’s nothing particularly weird about it.  The Personenregie is careful and precise and the emphasis is on text and story telling.  The opera house element perhaps comes into play in the rather impressive visuals including an extremely dramatic storm scene.

1.venus

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Moving Traviata from MMF

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It’s not all that often I feel genuinely moved by an opera on video.  It’s so much less immersive than experiencing live.  There is the occasional one.  Both the Berlin Parsifal and the Aix-en-Provence La traviata come to mind.  The recently released La traviata from the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino is another one.  It’s an interesting and effective production with a strong cast centred on the searing Violetta of Nadine Sierra.

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Classy singing from the Rebanks fellows

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Yesterday’s free concert in the RBA featured the vocalist Rebanks fellows from the Glenn Gould School.  There was some very classy and very powerful singing.  We heard Hannah Crawford, fresh off her second place at Centre Stage, sing a couple of arias; “Pleurez, plearez mes yeux” from Masenet’s Le Cid and “Come Scoglio” from Cosí.  There was some very considerable power on display here as well as accuracy and emotion.  Definitely one to watch.

hannah

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Opera Sustenida’s Il Trovatore

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Opera Sustenida was started during the pandemic and came to my attention because of a couple of well produced on-line shows.  Feeling very strongly that it’s time to move back to live performance, and not seeing much yet from the smaller opera companies, I could hardly overlook Opera Sustenida’s show, even if I might not have chosen Verdi’s Il Trovatore for my first go at a live production.

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