Netrebko and Pappano pack a punch at Salzburg: La Gioconda

Posted on March 24, 2024 by Mark Pullinger

Ponchielli: La Gioconda

Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg, 23rd March 2024

Anna Netrebko (La Gioconda) and Tareq Nazmi (Alvise)
© Bernd Uhlig

There’s more to La Gioconda than The Dance of the Hours, although Disney’s animated classic Fantasia boosted the ballet music’s fame. The Royal Opera House has never staged Amilcare Ponchielli’s opera before (there were two concert performances in 2004) but Covent Garden’s top brass — Oliver Mears and Antonio Pappano — were at the helm for this new production at Salzburg’s Easter Festival.

Continue reading at The Times…

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Oliver Mears turns La Gioconda into a tale of abuse at the Salzburg Easter Festival

Posted on March 24, 2024 by Mark Pullinger

Ponchielli: La Gioconda

Großes Festspielhaus, Salzburg, 23rd March 2024

Liudmila Konovalova (La Gioconda in The Dance of the Hours) and Anna Netrebko (La Gioconda)
© Bernd Uhlig

Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Gioconda is an opera it’s easy to scoff at: unlikely coincidences, disguises and fake poisons pile on top of each other at every turn in a tale of lust and vengeance in the middle of which pops up perky ballet The Dance of the Hours, forever associated in the minds of many of us with hippos in tutus in Disney’s animated classic Fantasia.

To his immense credit, Oliver Mears takes it deadly seriously, using the prelude and the ballet music to present a backstory where we learn about an abusive relationship between Gioconda (a ballad singer) and Barnaba (an Inquisition spy).

Continue reading at Opera Now…

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Play your cards right: La fanciulla del West and Pique Dame at Opéra de Lyon

Posted on March 18, 2024 by Mark Pullinger

Puccini: La fanciulla del West
Tchaikovsky: Pique Dame

Opéra de Lyon, 15th-16th March 2024

Dmitry Golovnin (Hermann) in Pique Dame
© Jean-Louis Fernandez

For its spring festival, Opéra de Lyon gambled on a pair of new productions featuring works that both hinge on crucial card games. If Tatjana Gürbaca’s take on La fanciulla del West plays it safe, the stakes are higher in Timofey Kulyabin’s audacious bid in a provocative Pique Dame, where bold risks largely pay off.

Puccini’s spaghetti western doesn’t enjoy the popularity it deserves; it is arguably his most symphonically scored opera, but it lacks a real ‘hit tune’. It also has a large cast of comprimario roles and is difficult for a director to choreograph, but Gürbaca gives it a decent shot.

Read full review in the Summer 2024 issue of Opera Now

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Sinking into Parsifal: Jonas Kaufmann

Posted on March 15, 2024 by Mark Pullinger

Interview: Jonas Kaufmann

Another month, another Gramophone cover story! (still pinching myself…)

“As you can imagine, it was far from normal!” Jonas Kaufmann is no stranger to the role of Parsifal, but the tenor can have had few stranger experiences than the new production at the Vienna State Opera in April 2021. Dissident director Kirill Serebrennikov, banned from leaving his native Russia, supervised his jailbird Parsifal – a deeply flawed staging in which Montsalvat is a prison, and Klingsor’s magic castle the offices of a glossy glamour magazine – via video conference. Then a Covid surge led to another lockdown, restricting the run to a single performance, live-streamed from an empty opera house.

Read full interview in the March 2024 issue of Gramophone

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Pushing the limits: Asmik Grigorian

Posted on January 26, 2024 by Mark Pullinger

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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