(Photo: © Richard Hubert Smith/Glyndebourne Festival Opera 2024) The picnic hampers are packed, dinner jackets dry-cleaned, cufflinks wrangled, and drizzle forecast: the British country house opera season is back. It opens with a new production of Georges Bizet’s box-office stalwart “Carmen” from Glyndebourne Festival Opera, directed by Diane Paulus and conducted by Glyndebourne Music Director Robin Ticciati. This latest version, {…}
(Photo credit: © Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Richard Hubert Smith) John Cox and David Hockney’s production of “The Rake’s Progress” for Glyndebourne can surely lay claim to being the longest-running staging in the UK. It is 48-years-young this season, and on its 12th revival between Festival and Tour, not to mention the numerous loans of the production to international houses of {…}
(Photo: Richard Hubert Smith) Whether you like Barrie Kosky’s stagings or not, they always have an enormous presence. Think of the Marlene Dietrich-inspired gorilla suit in his “Carmen” for the Royal Opera House, the inflatable Beckmesser caricature in the Nuremberg trial “Meistersinger”, or the eerie sea of ash and candles in his “Saul” for Glyndebourne. The latter, highly acclaimed, meant {…}
Robin Ticciati is set to leave his post as Chief Conductor of the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin during the 2024-25 season. The conductor will leave after eight years, a period that surpasses his three predecessors – Kent Nagano, Ingo Metzmacher, and Tugan Sokhiev. Ticciati began his term in 2017 and has performed a wide range of repertoire ranging from baroque works {…}
(© Richard Hubert Smith) Ethel Smyth’s opera “The Wreckers” opened the Glyndebourne Festival Opera last weekend, receiving its first-ever performance in the original French – libretto by Henry Brewster – and with many savage cuts restored. Its journey has been a long one: Smyth was repeatedly thwarted by war, misogynistic attitudes, musical conservatism, and meddling conductors. For some context – {…}
(Credit: © Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photo: Bill Cooper) Glyndebourne’s final production of this year’s festival is a semi-staged realization of Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde,” conceived by Daniel Dooner and featuring Glyndebourne music director Robin Ticciati in the pit, accompanied by their resident orchestra the London Philharmonic Orchestra. It’s a production that boldly sets out several role debuts, in Simon {…}
It is an under-appreciated coincidence that Janacek’s searing opera of bourgeois repressiveness and psychological collapse appears in the same year as fellow Moravian Sigmund Freud’s “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” and his study of “Mass Psychology” (they were, in fact, born mere miles apart). “Kat’a Kabanova” is a psychic drama of shame and self-hatred. As in Freud’s work, Janacek creates a {…}
Robin Ticciati has renewed his contract as Music Director of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin. The conductor, who has held the position of Chief Conductor and Music Director since the 2017-18 season, will continue in his post beyond 2022 for another five years. Under Ticciati, the DSO’s repertoire has expanded and new presentation forms, unusual concert venues, and exceptional projects like {…}
Opera in cinemas seems to be a major trend all around the world and the Glyndebourne Festival will continue its acclaimed transmissions. The season gets off to a start on June 8, 2017, with the 2014 production of Verdi’s “La Traviata” starring acclaimed tenor Michael Fabiano and Bolshoi star Venera Gimadieva. The series continues on July 10, 2017, with the {…}
Joel Revzen will conduct tonight’s performance in the absence of Robin Ticciati, who is ill. The Metropolitan Opera announced the news via Twitter this afternoon. The cancellation marks the second performance that Ticciati cancels as he was indisposed for Saturday’s performance. Revzen has been on staff with the Met Opera throughout the season, covering performances for such operas as “L’Italiana in {…}