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Always an amusing diversion, the range and quality of opera blogs (including this one) vary considerably. I’ve listed a few of the major ones down a bit on the left hand column. New ones of note that have come onstream in the last few months include Opera North, and also Justin Murphy’s blog for Wexford Festival Opera (apologies for not putting your link up sooner, Justin). These are both tied to specific companies, though that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are getting undiluted PR. Other blogs, however, do strive for independence, and the relish with which they enjoy their liberties certainly has brought a new dimension to opera journalism that didn’t exist a decade or so ago: the wonderful, irreverent Opera Chic immediately springs to mind, of course, as does Intermezzo, though the one I enjoy the most, mostly opera…, is sadly silent at present. All of these have links to vastly greater numbers of other blog sites as well, so you can happily while away a wet afternoon.
Forget Burns Night…
as Mostly Opera has reminded me, today is the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Richard Strauss’ Elektra in Dresden. Nothing beats Scary Strauss, and this opera would have to be Strauss at his scariest….
Leonie Rysanek as Elektra
As befits the most extravagant of art-forms, opera requires a lot of optimism and enthusiasm. That and, of course, large amounts of ready money. With the latter nowadays in short supply, opera companies – like businesses of all kinds – are suffering right now, with some already reporting big losses in revenue (including even the hallowed Met in New York) and others having to go out of business altogether.
So far two Irish opera companies are also in this boat, with Opera 2005 losing all of its Arts Council funding and the Anna Livia Dublin International Opera Festival also out of the complex funding loop it had hitherto managed to secure. Anna Livia always – despite all the late Bernadette Greevy’s best efforts on behalf of Irish singers – seemed an eccentric amalgam of charity case and vanity project, with its productions a bizarre throwback to the 1950s or 60s (surtitles? – no way!). The Festival also managed to access some unconventional funding streams which, while ingenious, didn’t endear it to the rest of the arts community (the best summary comes half-way down this article from the Irish Times). Opera 2005, on the other hand, as Cork’s sole professional opera company, has consistently ticked all the boxes in terms of education and outreach, and judging by its reviews was gradually developing its artistic standard as well, so for it too lose the mere €110,000 that somehow managed to fund most of this does make it the bad-news story of the season, and we have to hope that the company will survive.
Away from such Darwinian concerns, Opera Theatre Company and Opera Ireland remain, along with Wexford, relatively unaffected (for now…), and there are upcoming shows to report:
Friday Feb 6 sees the first performance of Fergus Johnston’s new opera The Earl of Kildare, presented at the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray by OI in association with Living Opera. The libretto (in English) is by the poet and dramatist Celia de Fréine. This will be a one-off workshop production with minimal staging and piano accompaniment, so I don’t know if it really counts as a full ‘premiere’, and there will be a post-performance discussion with the composer and artistic team, for those who are interested. The narrative concerns the story of ‘Silken Thomas’ (the nickname of Thomas FitzGerald, Earl of Kildare and deputy Governor of Ireland), who led an ill-fated uprising against King Henry VIII in the 1530s. This will be Fergus’ second opera (the first, Bitter Fruit, was staged in collaboration with OTC in 1992), and production info and booking details for this gig can be found here.
Talking of Opera Theatre Company, they too begin a new national tour the following week. Having ventured in recent years into Romantic and even Modernist Opera (with Debussy’s Pelléas), they relive former glories by returning to Handel, with three productions planned this year to mark the 250th anniversary of Handel’s death in 1759, starting with one of Handel’s silliest – and most popular – operas, Xerxes. This is the one where the king sings an ode to his favourite tree, in the aria “Ombra mai fù”, before heading off to compete with his brother for the same girl, in a plot of escalating love triangles and mistaken/hidden identities that can be enormous fun. If you’re curious to see how this plays out, there’s the famous 1980s ENO production by Nicholas Hytner, still available on DVD; it’s aged noticeably, though arguably this just brings out the campery all the more (Lesley Garrett as Atalanta… !!). Still, why this work, of all Handel’s operas, has achieved such prominence is beyond me, though OK the music is excellent, with Atalanta’s aria at the finale of Act I an absolute cracker. OTC’s tour is quite fleeting – only two showings in Dublin, and one of them an “open dress”, for goodness sake… – so rush if you want to see this: details here.
Opera Ireland have just announced a link-up with RTE Lyric FM and Movies@ to bring this year’s season of High-Definition simulcasts from the NY Met to a few (OK, three – Dundrum, Swords & Dungarvan) screens in Ireland, so now we can see what all the fuss is about. While I admit I was hoping we’d get to see Covent Garden’s broadcasts, this is a case where beggars certainly can’t be choosers, and I can see myself swallowing my pride and parking myself in Dundrum to catch what the New Yorkers have to offer.
The ten shows listed certainly cover a lot of ground, though inevitably one can’t help wondering at what’s been left out. After all, the Met is famous for its Wagner, and they’re doing about five of his operas this year, but we won’t be seeing any of them… what’s that about? Admittedly, they’re still recycling the old Otto Schenk/Günther Schneider-Siemssen productions for the Ring operas (albeit for the final outing, apparently), but it would have been nice to have seen their new Tristan, if only for Rene Pape’s King Marke.
The productions that are on the list all the same offer a substantial complement to our normally lean Dublin fare, notable highlights including the chance to see the Minghella Madama Butterfly (originally seen at ENO), Karita Mattila as Salome, Natalie Dessay & Juan Diego Florez in La sonnambula, Robert Lepage’s new production of Berlioz’ Damnation de Faust and John Adams’ new piece about Robert Oppenheiner & the Manhattan Project, Doctor Atomic, so it should all be really interesting. I hope it gets the following it deserves.
A rare day for Irish culture (especially in these straightened times). Congratulations to Wexford Festival Opera on the opening of the new Wexford Opera House on the site of the former Theatre Royal (full report in yesterday’s Irish Times, here). The image above is from a month ago, so it’s looking even better now.
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