Pushing the limits: Asmik Grigorian

Interview: Asmik Grigorian

Really proud of this cover story for Gramophone – a soprano I greatly admire, but who hasn’t always seemed to enjoy doing interviews. We had a blast! And that cover must surely be the coolest Gramo has published in its 100+ year history…)

“Risk is what makes us grow. I strongly believe our life starts when we cross the border of our comfort zone.” Asmik Grigorian is not a singer to shy away from risk. We meet in Hamburg in late October, the day after she opened a new production of Salome, but already the Lithuanian soprano’s mind is onto the next project, her role debut as Turandot in Vienna – casting that has raised more than a few eyebrows.

Read full interview in the February 2024 issue of Gramophone

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In Vienna, Lydia Steier stages Candide as a bawdy Broadway romp

Bernstein: Candide

MusikTheater an der Wien, 21st January 2024

Opera? Operetta? Musical? Perhaps because Candide doesn’t slot into a neat category, it has struggled to find its niche in the repertoire. The work of a multitude of librettists – but only one composer, Leonard Bernstein – it has existed in many guises and revisions. The “final definitive version” as conducted by the composer at London’s Barbican in 1989 – a year after the “definitive version” prepared by John Mauceri, under the Bernstein’s supervision, for Scottish Opera – assigns most of the dialogue to a narrator, much as in the original Voltaire novel (1759) satirising Enlightenment ideals on the theme of “optimism”.

Nikola Hillebrand (Cunegonde) and ensemble
© Werner Kmetitsch

Continue reading at Opera Now

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In Vienna, a Turandot without the clichés

Puccini: Turandot

Wiener Staatsoper, 7th December 2023

Who is Turandot? An ice princess from Chinese fairytale? Forget that in Claus Guth’s outstanding new staging for the Wiener Staatsoper. Never one to deal in kitsch or cliché, Guth has no place for Chinese lanterns or dragons. Instead, he focuses on the psychology of the protagonists in a highly symbolic reading that signals Sigmund Freud and Franz Kafka more than the Far East. Throw in a pair of role debuts – Asmik Grigorian as Turandot and Jonas Kaufmann as Calaf – and Vienna was abuzz with anticipation on opening night.

Jonas Kaufmann (Calaf) and Asmik Grigorian (Turandot)
© Monika Rittershaus

Continue reading at Opera Now… 

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Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci: murder, lust and fiery singing

Mascagni: Cavalleria rusticana; Leoncavallo: Pagliacci

Royal Opera House, 30th November 2023

Anna The verismo twins Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci are back, fatally entwined since 1893, when Pietro Mascagni and Ruggero Leoncavallo’s one-act operas first shared a double bill. Their deadly embrace is locked even tighter in Damiano Michieletto’s Olivier award-winning production at Covent Garden, where action from one opera spills over into the other, set in the same crime-riddled Sicilian village: Nedda and Silvio’s passion is ignited in Cav’s intermezzo, while in Pag’s the pregnant Santuzza is reconciled with the grieving Mamma Lucia. It’s little strokes of genius such as this that make Michieletto’s staging one of the most reliable in the Royal Opera’s stable.

Roberto Alagna (Turiddu) and Royal Opera Chorus
© ROH | Marc Brenner

Continue reading at The Times

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A bloodless Salome at Staatsoper Hamburg

Strauss: Salome

Staatsoper Hamburg, 29th October

“I believe we must leave the killing out, when all is done.” Dmitri Tcherniakov seems to have taken a leaf from Starveling’s book in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His Salome for Staatsoper Hamburg is a bloodless affair: Narraboth does not stab himself, Salome is not crushed to death and – crucially – John the Baptist does not lose his head.

Asmik Grigorian (Salome)
© Monika Rittershaus

Read full review in the January 2024 issue of Opera Now

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