Thursday, July 15, 2010

Catfish Row in Lyon - France

Of all the big cities in France, Lyon has the best (relatively affordable) French restaurants. My last trip to Lyon will remain unforgettable because it was crowned by a lunch at the restaurant Christian Têtedoie. Good God!!! If you plan to go to Lyon next year to see Tristan und Isolde don't miss the opportunity to indulge yourself in some of those ridiculously delicious places ;)

OK, I won't talk about food, but rather about the Opéra National de Lyon, arguably the most exciting opera house in France right now. They are involved in many co-productions with the world's most prestigious opera houses and festivals, they have excellent orchestra led by Kazushi Ono (some years back Kent Nagano was the house conductor), and they are particularly blessed to have Serge Dorny as GM, because he's enterprising, pragmatic, mixes up cleverly the program of their opera-seasons...  To me he's a very example of how an opera house should be run (as opposed to the Paris Opera, for example)



Next two days, July 16 and July 17, Lyon will celebrate Porgy and Bess, by organizing a bunch of popular jazz concerts all over the city, and also by a massive public viewing of the production of Porgy and Bess premiered two years ago at Opéra National de Lyon, which will be live broadcast on Saturday  July 17  at 21:00 (cet), on big screens on the main city squares in 12 cities of the Rhône-Alpes region. There is a good chance that the show will be live webcast too -- I'll keep you posted...

You can find more detailed information on the cast and on the production team here. Besides these two shows, there will be another two at in September. In the meantime the production will travel to Edinburgh for 3 sold-out performances at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Pleased to notice the name of Gregg Baker in the cast of tomorrow's show [remember the awesome Amfortas from Bieito's Parsifal in Stuttgart that I mentioned here?!]

I struggled but finally managed to append a video excerpt from this production - enjoy


2 comments:

  1. As you are 100% responsible for booking Tristan in Lyon ;-) I shall now have to try a menu degustation at your recommendation. Perhaps not a good idea before a matinee of Tristan zzzzzz.

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  2. Hey John! Glad to see that you didn't resist the temptation :)

    Before Tristan I'll post a selected list of restaurants in the Lyon downtown area.

    Cheers

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