| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 4-Aug-2012 Großes Festspielhaus | La bohème in Salzburg with Netrebko and a tenor surprise |
 When Salzburg Festival director Alexander Pereira stepped onto the stage of the Großes Festspielhaus last night to announce that one of the cast members of La bohème was sick and unable to sing, he faced a chorus of hisses from the audience. Soprano Anna Netrebko, the festival’s biggest non-conductor star, was feeling fine (though as Mimì she would shortly die of consumption). But the excellent tenor Piotr Beczala had decided a mere ten minutes earlier that his vocal cords would not be up to singing Rodolfo that night. We would have to wait forty minutes for a replacement.Read full review... | |
| 26-Oct-2010 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Gounod's Roméo et Juliette at Covent Garden |
 COOPER.jpg) Gounod's Roméo et Juliette isn't exactly a rarity, but it is no longer one of the stalwarts of the opera repertoire, a position which it certainly occupied during the Victorian era (there were 102 performances at the Théâtre-Lyrique in Paris in the first year of its life, followed by 291 performances at the Opéra-Comique in the next twenty). The Royal Opera's present production dates back to 1994, and is being revived for just the second time.
Read full review... | |
