Hardly surprising if I love the above image by Bill Knight of the sexy-in-any-wear Régis Mengus in Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias. Laurent Pelly's Glyndebourne double bill kicks off with the most unusual and powerful staging of La Voix humaine I've seen; little surprise if it was one of my top performances of the year in the 2022 Arts Desk 'Best of Opera'. So was the English Concert semi-staging of Handel's Serse at St Martin-in-the-Fields with five classy women (Emily D'Angelo pictured below by Paul Marc Mitchell, Lucy Crowe, Paula Murrihy, Daniela Mack and Mary Bevan) and vivid playing under Harry Bicket.
So I've chosen these three operas along with Poulenc's masterpiece, Dialogues des Carmélites, for summer's Opera in Depth classes. Not least because I hope Robin Ticciati, steeped in Poulenc at Glyndebourne over two seasons, will join us along with some of the singers and Bicket from the EC Serse. The Glyndebourne Carmélites opens on 10 June.
We certainly did well over the seven Rosenkavalier classes. First came Paula Murrihy, one of the best Octavians in the world today, and conductor Fergus Sheil, giving us quality time after a day's rehearsal ahead of the Irish National Opera spectacular.
Then, in the last class, a Marschallin and Ochs for the ages, Dame Felicity Lott and Sir John Tomlinson, appeared TOGETHER (quite a dream come true; you'll have to click for the bigger picture but I wanted the two to appear as we all saw them - FLott is top left and JT on the right of the second row).
Students have agreed that FLott's characterisation is the most moving and gracefully real of all; it's a shame there's not more of John Tom's Ochs to be seen.
And in a last-minute bonus, Richard Jones and his inspiring choreographer/movement director Sarah Fahie, whose Glyndebourne Rosenkavalier was the most meticulous and inventive movement-wise of just about any opera production I've seen, were able to join us once their stupendous ENO Rhinegold was up and running, so we got quite a bit on that from them too.
What had to be cut out of the chat on Richard's request - that Bertie Carvel will be taking the role of Henry Higgins in his (RJ's) Pygmalion at the Old Vic - can now be revealed as it's official. Shaw's play, fascinatingly, was premiered only two years after Rosenkavalier, in 1913, and (very surprising, this) at the Hofburg Theatre, Vienna, in a German translation.
Anyway, full details of the new term, which starts on Monday (17 April) below - click to enlarge (do join us, from anywhere in the world - if you can't make the live class I always send a video).
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3 comments:
Sounds like you had a typically extraordinary set of classes. I was indeed fascinated to learn this: Shaw's play, fascinatingly, was premiered only two years after Rosenkavalier, in 1913, and (very surprising, this) at the Hofburg Theatre, Vienna, in a German translation. So interesting to think of these two works in that context, and that Shaw’s play premiered in Vienna in German. Would love to know the back story about that.
Good luck with the coming set of classes!
Thanks, Sue. All I know is that Mrs Pat Campbell was unwell, so the UK premiere was postponed, and Vienna got in first. No doubt if I look up my Holroyd biography, all will be revealed...
Ah, interesting, so perhaps very straightforward!
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