Richard Brunel has been officially installed as the new director at the Opéra de Lyon, effective September 2021. Per France Musique, the appointment was approved by Minister of Culture Franck Riester. Brunel started his career as an actor in the early 1990s before creating the collective Compagnie Anonyme. From there his career continued to take flight with the director becoming {…}
The old Irish proverb “Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” is particularly applicable to Barcelona-born director Àlex Ollé. Without insinuating any untoward obsession with Satan, in the past ten years Ollé has had numerous dramaturgical dalliances with the Prince of Darkness. First was the cutesy “F@ust3.0” in collaboration with Fura dels Baus co-director Carlos Padrissa. In {…}
The Opéra de Lyon has recently announced its offerings for the 2018-19 season, which will feature staged productions, concerts, and the Opera Underground series. Here’s a look at what’s on offer for next season. Opera Boito’s “Mefistofele” opens the season with the company’s Music Director Daniele Rustioni leading the musical forces. Evgenia Muraveva takes on the two lead roles of {…}
“Don Carlos” or “Don Carlo?” In French or Italian? Four acts or five? Three hours or four? Paris, Naples, Milan or Modena version? Pas de deux or pas de nul? Verdi’s longest opera is so full of revisions, rewrites, authorized or impious corrections, it is impossible to nominate a definitive score. The master music dramatist tinkered with this opera for 20 {…}
Muttering the word “Macbeth” in a theatre is worse than hollering “Free Booze” at an AA meeting. The so-called “Macbeth curse” has existed since Shakespeare’s regicidal highland fling first appeared in 1606. Legend has it that on the opening night Lady Macbeth (played as Elizabethan/Stuart traditions demanded by a teenage boy) took method acting a bit far and dropped dead. Nowadays the {…}
Giuseppe Verdi didn’t think much of political oppressors no matter if they were civilized Habsburg princes with good table manners or arriviste autocrats with one hand on the guillotine and the other in the till. Some of the least attractive characters in his operas ranged from pushy regicidal wives and vengeful Venetian psychopaths to homicidal high priests of Ptah and {…}
Conductor Daniele Rustioni is poised to change things up at the Opera de Lyon in coming seasons. The Italian maestro was presented as the newly minted Music Director of the company at a private reception in New York on Thursday at the Bar Boulud on Broadway. Along with him was Lyon Opera’s own General Director Serge Dorny to reveal the {…}