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Royal Opera 2024-25


JohnS

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A new name - ‘Royal Ballet & Opera’

 

Main operas:

Figaro

Traviata

Eugene Onegin

Fidelio

Tales of Hoffman 

Tosca

Boheme

Hansel & Gretel

Jenufa

Aida

Festen - Turnage World Premiere

Trovatore

Turandot

Carmen

Walkure - Pappano conducting 

Faust 

Semele

 

There are a number of Linbury opera performances in the Linbury Theatre.

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Oh, I do hope to hear that it is a new production of Eugene Onegin. The Kasper Holten staging is such a travesty to my favourite opera. If it remains the same, I shall have to attend with my eyes closed.

 

 

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1 minute ago, MildConcern said:

Oh, I do hope to hear that it is a new production of Eugene Onegin. The Kasper Holten staging is such a travesty to my favourite opera. If it remains the same, I shall have to attend with my eyes closed.

 

 


Agreed. It is impossible to engage with the Kasper Holten staging but I can’t imagine that a new production has been commissioned. 

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Yes, the whole season screams "consolidation" - I believe Hoffmann will be new to ROH (Michieletto, should be intelligent) and Semele is travelling from the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, but apart from these and the Walkure and the Turnage I don't see much scope for new productions.*

 

*And if there were to be others they'd probably choose the ones people actually like.

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Wow.  They have managed to squeeze in just about every 'bums on seats' opera in the repertoire.  I hope the casting is good for Semele as I missed it last time around.

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Apologies I don’t think I can list the big voices - the full details should be published tomorrow.

 

Just picking up one comment, Eugene Onegin is a new production, Ted Huffman directing. The blurb says he directed 4:48: Psychosis and ‘… brings his unique vision … that blurs the boundaries between memory, longing and desire.’ There’s a feature on Huffman in the Autumn Booking Magazine.

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34 minutes ago, JohnS said:

 

Just picking up one comment, Eugene Onegin is a new production, Ted Huffman directing. The blurb says he directed 4:48: Psychosis and ‘… brings his unique vision … that blurs the boundaries between memory, longing and desire.’ There’s a feature on Huffman in the Autumn Booking Magazine.

JohnS, you've rather made my day!

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Many thanks @MildConcern. I’m afraid I didn’t know much about Ted Huffman but I have now read the Magazine article and his approach to Onegin seems promising: not a period piece as he’s ‘interested in the emotional story, rather than the social or historical one.’ And he goes on to say: ‘we really will have dance with a capital D in the show. I really love dance in opera.’


I rather like it that we’re having Eugene Onegin and Onegin in the 2024-25 season.

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34 minutes ago, MildConcern said:

JohnS, you've rather made my day!

 

Alternatively, "keep a-hold of Nurse, for fear of finding something worse”...Do you remember 4:48: Psychosis? If not, perhaps worth looking it up: "The play definitely made the audience respond; some of them even walked out during the performance, others covered their eyes or tried to defuse the tension and shock with laughter". 

 

Edited by Geoff
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43 minutes ago, Geoff said:

Do you remember 4:48: Psychosis? If not, perhaps worth looking it up: "The play definitely made the audience respond; some of them even walked out during the performance, others covered their eyes or tried to defuse the tension and shock with laughter". 


Or perhaps not so promising …

 

We shall just have to wait and see. 

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I don't (or hardly ever) go to opera, so can I just clarify - are there really 17 full-length opera productions next season? If so, is that the same number as usual? And if so if so (and I know this is an age-old issue) how can that possibly be justified compared to the number of ballets? The ROH gives every impression in all its promotional material that ballet and opera are equal (in fact they regularly mention ballet first, as if to assure us that it doesn't play second fiddle); but it seems that they most definitely are not.

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2 hours ago, JohnS said:

Many thanks @MildConcern. I’m afraid I didn’t know much about Ted Huffman but I have now read the Magazine article and his approach to Onegin seems promising: not a period piece as he’s ‘interested in the emotional story, rather than the social or historical one.’ And he goes on to say: ‘we really will have dance with a capital D in the show. I really love dance in opera.’

 

If it's not a period setting then that's probably going to be an Avoid for me. Also given one of the things I most disliked about Holten's Eugene Onegin was the use of dancer doubles for the 2 main characters, the prospect of another production with dance as a significant feature does not encourage me either.

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Rather pleased with the casting for Faust, Turandot, Tosca and Onegin. A lot of the names I hoped to see are present in some capacity over the season. 

 

Most of all, I'm glad it's not a second season without the wonderful Lisette Oropesa!

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On 29/04/2024 at 16:58, Scheherezade said:


Agreed. It is impossible to engage with the Kasper Holten staging but I can’t imagine that a new production has been commissioned. 

It is a new production of Eugene Onegin. 

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9 hours ago, jackyt said:

It is a new production of Eugene Onegin. 


It is indeed, and that should provide a glimmer of hope, but Geoff’s dire warning up thread is now filling me with terror; “"keep a-hold of Nurse, for fear of finding something worse”...Do you remember 4:48: Psychosis?”

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Of course Psychosis was based on the Sarah Kane play which is a byword for horror, so it was bound to be horrific whoever directed it!

But googling this director has not much reassured me I must say.

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On 29/04/2024 at 18:14, JohnS said:

Apologies I don’t think I can list the big voices - the full details should be published tomorrow.

 

Just picking up one comment, Eugene Onegin is a new production,

 

That's about par for the course for EO at the RO: do it infrequently, but change the production frequently. It's been that way since I started watching in the 90s, anyway ☹️

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About Eugene Onegin: I wanted to check to be sure before I wrote this but Liparit Avetisyan sang Lensky's aria at an ROH gala in 2018 and was the highlight of the evening - I don't think I've heard it done better live and I am very fussy indeed about this number. I'm prepared to shut my eyes against the production in order to hear it again.

 

(My all time ideal is the pre-WW2 Lemeshev recording, which is a lot to compete with - I don't even particularly like his timbre but it's astonishingly expressive as well as being a technical marvel.)

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