Two words

Poppea e Nerone

Stage before the beginning of Part-Two of Poppea e Nerone in Madrid

La prima starts in a little more than an hour.

You could NOT imagine what acrobacy with my work and time I had to make to come to Madrid for the show... Suffering for art, indeed ;) Cheers

More on the Tcherniakov production of Il Trovatore: production photos and video excerpts

As I already said in my blog-post after the yesterday's premiere, this show is among the very best of what opera can offer you this year, so if you possibly can, do go to Brussels and see this gem while it's on the program -- it will never be as good on video as it is in a live performance.

Production photos are added below [all ©Bernd Uhlig] and, thanks to the reader Claire, we learn that a video --produced by Cobra.be and containing several excerpts from the show-- is also available. The video is actually an interview with Marc Minkowski. It is not embeddable but here is your link.

You can also listen to an interview with Scott Hendricks on the FM-Brussel radio.

Congrats to Janai, Anthony and Enhbat -- Winners of Operalia 2012!

Operalia 2012 took place last week in Beijing and finished yesterday, Sunday June 10th, with a final concert that was live broadcast on Medici TV and is now available for free viewing (here is your link).

The winners are 

1st prize: Enhbat Amartuvshin (baritone-Mongolia), Anthony Roth Costanzo  (countertenor-USA) and Janai Brugger-Orman (soprano-USA)

2nd prize: Yunpeng Wang (baritone-China), Brian Jagde (tenor-USA) and Guanqun Yu (soprano-China),

3rd prize: Roman Burdenko (baritone-Russia) and Nadezhda Karyazina (mezzo-Russia)


Other prize winners are

Il Trovatore premiered in Brussels: Tcherniakov hits a big show again, Scott Hendricks too

Il Trovatore, La Monnaie/De Munt in Brussels, June 10 2012

Director ..... Dmitri Tcherniakov

Music direction ..... Marc Minkowski

Il Conte di Luna ..... Scott Hendricks

Manrico ..... Misha Didyk

Azucena ..... Sylvie Brunet-Grupposo

Leonora ..... Marina Poplavskaya

Ferrando ..... Giovanni Furlanetto

La Monnaie Symphony Orchestra & Chorus

Zaz

There is something positively operatic, sincere, that happens when listening to Isabelle Geffroy, a.k.a. Zaz. It's like with Lucio Dalla, with Jamie Cullum, with early Regina Spektor...