Superb Macbeth directed by van Hove; one more winner for Opéra de Lyon

Macbeth, Opéra National de Lyon, October 21 2012

Director ..... Ivo van Hove
Conductor ..... Kazushi Ono

Macbeth ..... Evez Abdulla
Banco ..... Riccardo Zanellato
Lady Macbeth ..... Iano Tamar
Suivante de Lady Macbeth ..... Kathleen Wilkinson
Macduff ..... Dmytro Popov
Malcolm ..... Viktor Antipenko

Orchestre et Chœurs de l'Opéra de Lyon

An Inconvenient Parsifal: From Opera de Lyon 2012 to The Metropolitan Opera in New York 2013

Parsifal, Opéra National de Lyon, March 25 2012

François Girard ..... Director
Kazushi Ono ..... Conductor

Nikolai Schukoff ..... Parsifal
Elena Zhidkova ..... Kundry
Gerd Grochowski ..... Amfortas
Georg Zeppenfeld ..... Gurnemanz
Alejandro Marco-Buhrmester ..... Klingsor
Kurt Gysen ..... Titurel
Tehmine Yeghiazaryan ..... Flowermaiden 1
Ivi Karnezi ..... Flowermaiden 2
Katharina von Bülow ..... Esquire 2 / Flowermaiden 3
Heather Newhouse ..... Esquires 1 / Flowermaiden 4
Sonja Volten ..... Flowermaiden 5
Ulrike Helzel ..... Une voix / Flowermaiden 6
Daniel Kluge ..... Grail Knight 1
Lukas Schmid ..... Grail Knight 2
Olesiy Palchykov ..... Esquires 4
Pascal Pittie ..... Esquires 3


Orchestre, Chœurs et Maîtrise de l'Opéra de Lyon

Diva/Divo at Théâtre des Champs Elysées: We love Joyce

Les grandes voix: Joyce DiDonato, Théâtre des Champs Elysées, September 22 - 2010 

It's a great pleasure to see Joyce DiDonato back in Paris, less than 3 months after her superb Elena in Rossini's La donna del lago at Opéra Garnier and her memorable recital at Théâtre des Champs Elysées (TCE).  Joyce and Paris -- that's a love story, so I wasn't at all surprised to see TCE full with people.

In one sentence, this was a wonderful concert and my pleasure was doubled by the fact that Kazushi Ono (who I also like very much!) came with the Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon to accompany Joyce. We learned...

Nightingale in Aix 2010: Une grosse tarte japonaise :)

Pretty music by Stravinsky --superbly played by the orchestra of the Lyon National Opera and conducted by always reliable maestro Kazushi Ono-- and the string of wonderful singers compensated a theatrical void staged in a Disney-World like fashion by Robert Lepage.

Nabil Suliman and Olga Peretyatko

You can see this ~50 minute long opera on Arte Live Web for free. Fast forward to about 100th minute when The Nightingale actually begins and enjoy.
In my humble opinion, what precedes this opera is far more interesting than The Nightingale itself. It's a selection of Russian songs that Stravinsky adapted for voice and orchestra, as well as the original songs he composed, all inspired by the Russian fairy tales. In that part Lepage too does a nice job by visualizing the stories by quickly mounting a shadow-theater. Only the last songs were spoiled by the excessive artistic gymnasts' performance in the same shadow theater...

Stravinsky's Nightingale from Aix

I didn't see last 20 minutes of Don Giovanni :(
Will comment on the Tcherniakov's production --which I tenderly loved-- once I see these last 20 minutes and I'm a liiiittle less busy.

Tonight, you can all try and see the Robert Lepage's production of The Nightingale



Thanks to the coolest TV in the Universe, it's free and it will start at 8 pm (Paris time - c.e.t). Bless Arte Live Web ;)

Information about the show can be found here. Our fave Kazushi Ono will conduct. With such a fantastic singers, I have no doubt that musicwise this will be 100 minutes of pure pleasure. As for the production itself, you already know that Robert Lepage's terabytes of computer images in an otherwise Zeffirelli's concept of theater are not what I like the most. So here is a hoping tonight we'll see a show in which the images do not hide the emptiness of content [like it was the case in the past, c.f. this].

FYI, French press is full of praise for this production,  which is certainly pleasant but says very little about the real quality of the show [French critique is 'atrocious' for the most part]. A short video about the show can be found here.

Ed: Olga Peretyatko and Elena Semenova are AMAZING singers. Nabil Suliman is very good too. In the show that we're about to see tonight they will combine live with the performance recorded last night. Olga complained on her blog about a sore throat she inadvertently woke up with yesterday, and the whole production team was freaking out all day... How it will all finish we'll see tonight. Good luck Olga [Удачи Оля!] :) 

Rolando Villazon to direct Werther in Lyon

Opéra de Lyon is a very good house and their program regularly contains some extremely interesting works.

One of this season's highlights was the new opera by Kaija Saariaho Émilie du Châtelet,  premiered last week (cf. this entry). I also saw and very much liked Moscow Cheryomushki.

They are still to announce the program for their 2010-2011 season, but a few important infos already leaked in the local press (see also here)...

Opéra National de Lyon

Julie by Boesmans and Bondy: an opera for posterity

So what about Julie? I saw this DVD a year ago or so. Since we have another production of this opera in Paris starting on January 8, I decided to see it again, to brush up on it.

3 general informations about this opera would be: (1) it is short - only 74 minutes long; (2) it is a chamber opera somehow following a Britten-like line of creation - I bet he would've loved it; (3) it is close to the Wagnerian vein too, as it combines an extraordinary libretto with the music that weaves through the text only to accelerate your dive into the psyche of each of three characters. This should be as close as you can get to the Wagnerian concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, and I'm pretty sure Wagner would have loved it too.