Idomeneo drowns in La Seine

In Paris, at Palais Garnier, we have yet another rerun of Idomeneo, the same Luc Bondi's production seen many times over the past 5 years on the stages in Milan, Madrid and in Paris.

More specifically, in Paris we saw it last year (!), but Nicolas Joel --the new unfortunate intendant of the Paris Opera-- insisted to program the very same production this year again. The only rational explanation for such an irrational decision is that he wanted to show how he can bring a better show to Garnier than his predecessor (Gerard Mortier). And so he announced Rolando Villazon and Anna Netrebko to sing, Emmanuelle Haïm to conduct, which made many aficionados rush to subscribe for the 2009-2010 Season at the Paris Opera: safe way to score the tickets for Idomeneo before the box-office opened... However,  several months before the premiere the two super-stars cancelled their appearance and the whole Nicolas Joel's vanity show turned into a nightmare:

Philippe Hui    Conductor
Luc Bondy    Stage Director

Charles Workman Idomeneo
Vesselina Kasarova Idamante
Isabel Bayrakdarian Ilia
Tamar Iveri Elettra
Lothar Odinius Arbace
Xavier Mas Gran Sacerdote di Nettuno

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.