An arresting Salome at the Royal Opera

It has been over 10 years since the Royal Opera staged Salome (the last time I saw it in 1997, it was Bryn Terfel as John the Baptist and Catherine Malfitano singing the title role). One forgets how hard it is to stage this work - no overture, run time of just over 90 minutes, with not a lot of action on stage except the dance.

I needn't to have worried - this new production by David McVicar , design by Es Devlin and conducted by Phillippe Jordan was arresting from start to finish. The two-level stage with a posh upstairs and a lavatorial downstairs gave much visual interest. The cast had lots of exciting new blood who gave a fantastic performance: Michael Volle sang John the Baptist and Nadja Michael sang the title role viscerally, with Duncan Meadows as the naked adonis-executioner. David McVicar's production let the inter-character dynamic and underlying psychological tension unfold along with the music. Phillippe Jordan kept the pace and excitement going through out in the jam-packed pit (Strauss wrote Salome for a Wagnerian-size orchestra). Of course, Strauss's lush orchestration and exotice textures did the rest of the work!

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Written On Skin at the Royal Opera

This was the first revival of George Benjamin's Written On Skin. As with contemporary operas, familiarity goes a long way in appreciating the work. In this revival, I found Christopher Purves's The Protector powerful and moving. Barbara Hannigan, who sang Agnès, was superb. The pure and slightly eerie tone of Iestyn Davies as The Boy completed the perfect cast.

Götterdämmerung at The Met

Carl Fillion's set design for The Ring at The Met caused a real stir at the premier. Though not having the luxury of seeing the whole Ring, I managed to get a ticket to see Götterdämmerung. Fabio Luisi at the helm of the large Met orchestra kept everything going. There was enough breathing space for the drama to unfold, and there were muscular moments that needed to punctuate the drama. Probably not as poised as Bernard Haitink at Covent Garden many years ago, or as gutsy as Antonio Pappano this season in the same house. But nonetheless very good. Deborah Voigt was a fine Brünhilde - as the role demands from beginning to end. Lars Cleveman was quite a believable Siegfried - youngish looking, jumps about, looking slightly naive on stage. Hans-Peter Köonig was OK - none of his phrases sent shiver down my spine as there was not enough evil. Back to the set. The rotating 'fingers' really worked (you can see them in this pic - sitting above the performers), especially...

Hänsel und Gretel at the Royal Opera

Having seen Hänsel und Gretel only a few months ago at Glyndebourne , I was looking forward to see how the Royal Opera will bring this fairytale opera to life. Christian Fenouillat pastoral set worked well. Like many operas with a small cast, he added a bounding box to reduce the size of the stage without losing perspective. Angelika Kirchschlager and Diana Damrau were believable Hänsel and Gretel respectively. Their stage acting (how they walked, jumped and cuddled) conveyed a real sense of innonance. Thomas Allen (their father) was on good form. The Dew Fairy (by Anita Watson) was fabulous with an orange duster and a yellow squirty spray cleaner. All in all, the creative team managed to strike a good balance between serious opera and fairytale. Colin Davis also did real justice to Humperdinck's lush Wagnerian score. It would be nice for this lovely work to remain in repertory around this time of the year to counter-balance the sickly sweek Nutcracker.

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