Opera Essentials: Madama Butterfly
Madama Butterfly © Bill Cooper/ROH 2011 The Story Begins… The young Japanese geisha Cio-Cio-San agrees to marry B.F. Pinkerton, a dashing US Navy lieutenant. She believes that it is a marriage of love,...
View ArticleMahagonny Musical Highlight: The Mandalay Song
Production photo of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny © ROH.Clive Barda 2015 Kurt Weill finished the score for Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in April 1929 – six months before the Wall...
View ArticleMadama Butterfly Musical Highlight: The Humming Chorus
Kristine Opolais as Cio Cio San in Madama Butterfly © ROH/Mike Hoban, 2011 When Giacomo Puccini saw David Belasco’s play Madame Butterfly in London in 1900, he fell in love with the production. Belasco...
View ArticleOpera Essentials: Swanhunter
Image of the Swan of Devil's River from Opera North's Resource Pack for Swanhunter © Opera North The Story Begins The heroic (if rather arrogant) Lemminkäinen leaves his Mother to venture to the frozen...
View ArticleIl turco in Italia Musical Highlight: ‘D’un bell’uso in Turchio’
Alessandro Corbelli and lldebrando D'Arcangelo in Il turco in Italia, The Royal Opera © ROH/Clive Barda, 2010 Rossini was expert in making the ridiculous even more ridiculous. Take the nonsense plot of...
View ArticleUnmistakably English: Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée
Chickens and Cockerel in La Fille mal gardée © Bill Cooper On paper, Frederick Ashton’s La Fille mal gardée could come across as the most ordinary full-length work in The Royal Ballet’s repertory. It...
View ArticleBallet Essentials: Woolf Works
Alessandra Ferri and Edward Watson in rehearsal for Woolf Works, The Royal Ballet © 2015 ROH. Photograph by Andrej Uspenski Dancing with Virginia Woolf Virginia Woolf was an English writer and...
View ArticleOpera Essentials: The Virtues of Things
David Stout as Selby de Selby, Fiona Kimm as Ellipsis de Selby, Robyn Allegra Parton as Peg de Selby and Paul Curievici as Eames in The Virtues of Things, The Royal Opera © 2015 ROH. Photograph by...
View ArticleKról Roger Musical Highlight: Roxana’s Song
Georgia Jarman and Mariusz Kwiecień in Król Roger © ROH. Photograph by Bill Cooper, 2015 Her voice, distant and unseen, comes out of nothing. Roxana sings offstage, a sweet, high, held note that slides...
View ArticleVerdi unpacked: A guide to the master of Italian opera
Giuseppe Verdi Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) was one of the great masters of Italian opera. His works redefined the genre through their character-driven intensity and taut dramatic structures. The sheer...
View ArticleOpera Essentials: Falstaff
Ambrogio Maestri in Falstaff, The Royal Opera © ROH/Catherine Ashmore, 2012 The Story Begins Old, large and lecherous, Sir John Falstaff can’t resist the ladies. But they can resist him, and three of...
View ArticleFalstaff musical highlight: ‘Sirena… quand’ero paggio del Duca di Norfolk’
Ambrogio Maestri as Falstaff © Catherine Ashmore/ROH 2012 Verdi’s final masterpiece Falstaff is famous more for its seamless transitions between solo sections and ensembles than for its arias. Those...
View ArticleDance Essentials: Whelan/Watson: Other Stories
Wendy Whelan and Edward Watson © Sean Malyon A Long Time Coming Dancers Wendy Whelan and Edward Watson say that they first came up with the idea of collaborating together around ten years ago, when...
View ArticleSaving the best until last: Our favourite operatic swansongs
The Last Hours of Mozart by Henry Nelson O'Neil, 1849. Image courtesy Wikicommons Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, 1791 Mozart’s final years were hobbled by debt, but he certainly wasn’t...
View ArticleOpera Essentials: Peter Pan
Ashley Holland in Keith Warner’s production of Peter Pan © WNO. Photograph by Clive Barda, 2015 The Story Begins… Peter Pan is a boy who refuses to grow up. When he loses his shadow, Wendy Darling...
View ArticleOpera Essentials: Orphée et Eurydice
The Story Begins… Orphée mourns the death of his beloved Eurydice. Amour tells him that if his singing can calm the Furies, he will be able to bring her back from the Underworld. But she warns Orphée...
View ArticleOrphée et Eurydice Musical Highlights: Dance of the Blessed Spirits and Dance...
Detail from 'Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld' by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 1861. Image courtesy Wikicommons The Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Gluck’s opera Orphée et Eurydice is one...
View ArticleLe nozze di Figaro Musical Highlight: ‘Dove sono i bei momenti’
Mozart believed that although opera buffa was intrinsically comic it should feature serious characters and themes. Countess Almaviva is perhaps the most serious and complex character in Le nozze di...
View ArticleBallet Essentials: Connectome and Raven Girl
Sarah Lamb and Artists of the Royal Ballet in Connectome, The Royal Ballet © ROH / Bill Cooper 2014 Connectome ‘I Am My Connectome’ Alastair Marriott’s Connectome is inspired in part by the theories of...
View ArticleCreating a Classic: How Kenneth MacMillan created Romeo and Juliet
Lynn Seymour as Juliet and Christopher Gable as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. © 1965 Roy Round When the Bolshoi Ballet first brought Leonid Lavrovsky’s Romeo and Juliet to the Royal Opera House in 1956,...
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