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World Premiere of an Abandoned Liszt Opera in Weimar – 170 Years Later Under its Principal Conductor Kirill Karabits, the Staatskapelle Weimar will give the world premiere of a rediscovered Italian opera Sardanapalo by Franz Liszt – which was left incomplete and has lain largely forgotten in a German archive for almost 100 years. ‘The … Read more
Franco Vassallo is an acclaimed interpreter of leading Verdi roles – amongst many others – in the world’s most important opera houses (including Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Opéra de Paris, London’s Royal Opera House and New York’s Metropolitan Opera). He has just sung Scarpia for the first time in Puccini’s Tosca at the Staatsoper Hamburg in the Robert Carsen production and performed with Anja Harteros and Jonas Kaufmann.
Interview with Arabella Steinbacher
When I spoke with Arabella Steinbacher, she was half way through a tour with the Orchestre National de Lille in Southern France playing the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto and conductor Mark Shanahan. The bitterly cold weather allowed the German violinist some extra time in her hotel to speak with me about her early career and her inspirations for what has been a busy calling embracing the standard classical repertoire and explorations of less known 20th century repertoire.
Laurence Equilbey on La Seine Musicale, Insula Orchestra
and Female Composers
Kokoschka’s Doll and The Art of Love, incorporating Einsamer Gang will be performed in Oxford and Newbury
It is well known that in addition to the fourteen songs by Alma Mahler published in her lifetime, several dozen more – perhaps as many as one hundred – were written and have been lost or destroyed. One of those ‘lost’ songs, Einsamer Gang (Lonely Walk), has recently been discovered and will be given its UK premiere performances by Rozanna Madylus and Counterpoise at the Wagner 1900 conference in Oxford (April) and at the Newbury Spring Festival (May).
PUSHKIN – THE OPERA
STAGED WORLD PREMIERE GIVEN BY MOSCOW’S NOVAYA OPERA AT GRANGE PARK OPERA, SURREY: 11-12 JULY 2018
A highlight of this season for soprano Lisette Oropesa was her Royal Opera debut as Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor) at Covent Garden. She will soon be making a role debut as Euridice in the French version of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice with Los Angeles Opera, in a new production opening on the 10 March, directed and choreographed by John Neumeier, and conducted by James Conlon. In advance of these performances in Los Angeles, Lisette Oropesa answers Seen and Heard International’s questions about this current role, as well as, looking back on her life and her career.
The Italian tenor Andrea Carè has recently appeared at the Teatro Real in Madrid – in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (Puccini) and Bizet’s Carmen – and at the Palau de Les Arts in Valencia – in Verdi’s Don Carlo alongside Plácido Domingo – and he returns to Covent Garden’s Royal Opera House (February 16, 27 and March 8, 12, 16) in the role of Don José in Carmen, a role he first performed there in 2015. He has previously said: ‘In spite of the brutality and intolerance of what Don José does, I still believe that in reality he is a pure man who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. He is a passionate man, as many of us are, but he does not have the luck or intelligence to realise that Carmen represents a danger to his own life, his heart and his mental stability. I believe that, however mistakenly and violently he behaves, there is a Don José in every one of us, constantly struggling not to fall into the abyss of insanity’.
In advance of these performances at Covent Garden Andrea Carè answers Seen and Heard International’s questions about this current role, as well as, looking back on his life and his career.