What's up in January 2010?

My selection of good operas or concerts to see in Paris during January 2010

Salle Pleyel

• Sat 9: Petra Lang will sing "Siegfried Idyll" and "Wesendonk Lieder", with a brilliant Budapest Festival Orchestra and Ivan Fischer.
  
• Mon 11: Kammerorchesterbasel, Hervé Niquet, Anne Sofie von Otter and others will give us a concert version of Offenbach's "La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein".
• Thu 14: Due to illness, Neeme Järvi will not conduct "Le Coq d'Or". He'll be replaced by his young  colleague Dmitri Slobodeniouk (a 35 year old Helsinki-based Russian). One of the excellent young conductors to follow!
• Wed 20 & Thu 21: Ingo Metzmacher will conduct Orchestre de Paris in two nights of Britten's  "War Requiem". Note also the presence of Indra Thomas, Paul Groves and Matthias Goerne.
• Fri 22: Philippe Jordan and Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France will perform Bartok.
• Sat 23: Christophe Rousset, his Les Talens lyriques and a nice set of singers will perform "King Arthur" - Purcell for you.
• Mon 25, Tue 26 & Fri 19 Valya Gergiev comes with Orchestra of the Mariinsky Theater to play all the Tchaikovsky's symphonies: day 1, 2, 3 the symphonies 1 & 4,  2 & 5,  3& 6,  respectively. 
• Sat 30 & Sun 31: London Symphony Orchestra is back, this time lead by Sir John Eliot Gardiner to perform Beethoven's works: with Maria-João Pires on Saturday; the 9th Symphony on Sunday [with Rebecca Evans].  
  

Théatre des Champs-Elysées

• Thu 7: Daniele Gatti and Orchestre National de France will roast the Shostakovich's 5th symphony and Stravinsky's Firebird.
• Thu 14 & Fri 15: Orchestre National de France lead by Riccardo Muti will play the  Spanish tunes with the harpist-soloist  Xavier de Maistre [Chabrier, Ginastera, DeFalla, Ravel].
• Fri 29: One of the greatest Russian pianists of our time, Nikolai Lugansky, is back to TCE  with a promising program...
• Sat 30: La prima of "La Cenerentola" with a set of very good singers: Siragusa, Degout, Spagnoli, D'Archangelo and Genaux.

Théâtre du Châtelet

• Fri 1, Sat 2 & Sun 3 : The Sound of Music which we already visited (see here)...
• January 18, 20, 22 24, 26 and 28: New production of  Bellini's "Norma" directed by Peter Mussbach.

Opéra national de Paris - Opéra Bastille

• January 14, 17, 20, 23, 26, 29: "Werther", a reheated production of Benoît Jacquot, known  to be boring during its run in ROH in 2004; Michel Plasson will conduct (boring!?), BUT a set of excellent singers may actually save the show: Jonas Kaufmann, Sophie Koch, Anne-Catherine Gillet and Ludovic Tézier.
  
• January 25, 28, 31: "La Sonnambula", and yet another reheated production premiered in ROH in 2002.   Marco Arturo Marelli  may give a push and pull something interesting out of this extremely poor libretto. We expected Juan Diego Florez in Elvino. Alas NO, we get Javier Camarena instead. But there will be 1 big star: Nathalie Dessay.

Opéra national de Paris - Palais Garnier

• January 20, 23, 26, 29: "Idomeneo", the same Luc Bondy's production we saw last year (for the 3rd time!) is back on program this year because Netrebko and Villazon said they would sing.  Meanwhile, they both pulled out and now the expectations are ZERO. For those who are discovering Mozart...

Opéra Comique 

•   January 16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24: "The Fairy Queen", Jonathan Kent's production of Purcell's work conducted by William Christie and his phenomenal Les Arts Florissants. The singers are maybe not the stars but be sure this will be beautifully sung and hey there will be Lucy Crow who ALWAYS sings good...

Théâtre Athénée

• January 8, 9, 10, 12, 13: "Julie" excellent work by Philippe Boesmans. This is NOT the same production as the one of Luc Bondy which has been presented in Aix some years ago,  and released on DVD.

Cité de la Musique

• See the sched of the 4th String Quartet Biennial. That's what the French are particularly brilliant at!!!
• Sat 23: The greatest orchestra in Paris (when compared to the other world known orchestra in their particular genre), Ensemble Intercontemporain, will give a concert of the works by Boulez and Montovani.

Auditorium du Louvre

• Wed 6: 2010 is the year of Russia in France so the Louvre starts with two hot new Russian pianists: Gleb Ivanov will play the works by Liszt, Schubert, Tchaikovsky and  Prokofiev.
• Mon 11: and then, Andrei Korobeinikov [works by Moussorgski and Shostakovich].
• Wed 13: Our fave Boris Berezovsky is back too with a program we should expect from a mature confirmed pianist: less known pieces by Rachmaninov and by Anatoly Lyadov (?). 

Musée d'Orsay

• Wed 13: Ensemble Intercontemporain with works of György Ligeti.
• Tue 26: The Radio France Choir will sing a good program in the main hall of the Museum which is always a beautiful experience.
• Thu 28: Debussy Quartet and François Dumont (piano) perform the works of Lekeu (?) and Franck.