We left at the interval...

ONP Bastille, Tuesday October 24 2023 Conductor: Alexander Soddy. Production: Kirill Serebrennikov. Sets: Olga Pavluk. Costumes: Tatiana Dolmatovskaya. Lighting: Franck Evin. Videos: Alan Mandelshtam. Choreographer: Evgeny Kulagin. Dramaturge: Daniil Orlov. Heinrich der Vogler: Kwangchul Youn. Lohengrin: Piotr Beczała. Elsa von Brabant: Johanni van Oostrum. Friedrich von Telramund: Wolfgang Koch. Ortrud: Ekaterina Gubanova. Der Heerrufer des Königs : Shen Yang. Brabantischer Edler: Bernard Arrieta, Chae-Hoon Baek, Julien Joguet, John Bernard. Edelknabe: Isabelle Escalier, Joumana El-Amiouni, Caroline Bibas, Yasuko Arita. Chorus and Orchestras of the Opéra National de Paris. Photos: Charles Duprat/ONP I'm going to begin this post by indulging my puzzled obsession with 'production churn' at the Paris Opera in supposedly straitened times, so please feel free to skip the part in blue if not interested. Yesterday, I Googled for 'Paris Opera Finances'; the following is a ...

La Monnaie, Brussels, Sunday April 29 2018. Conductor: Alain Altinoglu. Production: Olivier Py. Sets and costumes: Pierre-André Weitz. Lighting: Bertrand Killy. Heinrich der Vogler: Gabor Bretz. Lohengrin: Eric Cutler. Elsa von Brabant: Ingela Brimberg. Friedrich von Telramund: Andrew Foster-Williams. Ortrud: Elena Pankratova. Heerrufer: Werner Van Mechelen. Vier Brabantische Edle: Zeno Popescu, Willem Van Der Heyden, Kurt Gysen, Bertrand Duby. Edelknaben: Raphaële Green, Isabelle Jacques, Virginie Léonard, Lisa Willems. La Monnaie Orchestra and Chorus.  As a persistent opera-goer, however loudly you applaud Bieito or Warlikowski and however assiduously you seek out new works, you get used to being dismissed as a hidebound fuddy-duddy. And some directors also give the impression they think you're thick and need things spelling out. In the case of Olivier Py, this is often literally the case: his chalk bills must be huge, so often do his characters scrawl things on the walls ...

ONP Bastille, Monday January 30 2017 Conductor: Philippe Jordan. Production: Claus Guth. Heinrich der Vogler: René Pape. Lohengrin: Jonas Kaufmann. Elsa von Brabant: Martina Serafin. Friedrich von Telramund: Tomasz Konieczny. Ortrud: Evelyn Herlitzius. Der Heerrufer des Königs: Egils Silins. Vier Brabantische Edle: Hyun-Jong Roh, Cyrille Lovighi, Laurent Laberdesque, Julien Joguet/ Vier Edelknaben: Irina Kopylova, Corinne Talibart, Laetitia Jeanson, Lilla Farkas. Sets and Costumes: Christian Schmidt. Lighting: Olaf Winter. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris.  Wagner There's an expression I think sportspeople use that I can't remember at the moment: on a something... not on a roll or on a blast but something like that... that means that the athletes or whatever have gone beyond their normal physical limitations and entered a kind of trance, on a higher plane, or at any rate at a higher level of performance. This happens in music too, and I suspect Monda...

ONP Bastille, Tuesday June 5, 2007 Conductor: Valery Gergiev. Production: Robert Carsen. Sets and costumes: Paul Steinberg. Heinrich der Vogler: Jan-Hendrik Rootering. Lohengrin: Ben Heppner. Elsa von Brabant: Mireille Delunsch. Friedrich von Telramund: Jean-Philippe Lafont. Ortrud: Waltraud Meier. Der Heerrufer des Königs: Evgeny Nikitin. Orchestra and Chorus of the Opéra National de Paris. From what I read on the web, this run of Lohengrin has gone steadily gone downhill since the mostly positive reviews it got in its early days in the press ("Waltraud Meier is Ortrud, Ben Heppner is Lohengrin..."). It was soon troubled by Valery Gergiev's erratic punctuality, owing to his hectic performance schedule. One Saturday, it started 30 minutes late. The following week, management announced he was in his taxi; then, that he was still on his plane and that the first act would be conducted by someone else; then, after act one, that he had arrived but was "not in a fit sta...