Ned Keene
Based on a poem published in 1810 with more ethnographic than dramatic focus, Britten constructed a sombre parable about the conflict between the masses and the individual. The maritime atmosphere, the crudity of people’s lives and passions, and the complex, impenetrable personality of the protagonist come together in a tragedy which ferments and explodes in the din of silence and hearsay. New production of the Teatro Real, in co-production with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden of London, the Opéra national of Paris and the Teatro dell’Opera of Rome
Lost in a forest, a prince meets a mysterious woman and takes her home to a dark castle haunted by repressed longings. There she grows fonder of her new husband's half-brother, sparking a fatal love triangle between the three of them. In a perfect synergy of the arts, choreographers Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet, together with the legendary performance artist Marina Abramovic, stage Pelléas et Mélisande as a cosmic dream. Like Debussy through his impressionistic music, the performers and creators of this production dispense with any illustration and instead bring out the hidden emotions of the characters.
Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd will be performed in Norway for the very first time! This is an opera set in a hard masculine environment, about repressed passions and the weight of guilt - but also about rebellion, the power of beauty and about release. Director of Opera Annilese Miskimmon herself directs this masterpiece, featuring an exclusively male cast. Director Annilese Miskimmon and Set and Costume designer Annemarie Woods, take us onto a submarine during the Vichy regime in 1940s France. Here we meet a close and claustrophobic environment, controlled by sailors’ discipline and the meaningless necessity of war.
Horatio
Brett Dean's multi-award-winning opera received its world premiere at Glyndebourne Festival 2017. The world premiere recording of Brett Deans new opera based on Shakespeares best-known tragedy: To be, or not to be. This is Hamlets dilemma, and the essence of Shakespeares most famous and arguably greatest work, given new life in operatic form in this original Glyndebourne commission. Thoughts of murder and revenge drive Hamlet when he learns that it was his uncle Claudius who killed his father, the King of Denmark, then seized his fathers crown and wife. But Hamlets vengeance vies with the question: is suicide a morally valid deed in an unbearably painful world?
In this strikingly modern 2016 production from the Zurich Opera House, Tcherniakov transposes the opera’s intrigue from forest and castle to living room and psychiatric office. The love story of the original work remains riveting, but Tcherniakov brings an unexpected psychological element to his mise en scène, with Prince Golaud as a psychiatrist and Mélisande as a young woman suffering from PTSD. You’ve never seen Pelléas like this!
Pelléas
Drama lyrique in five acts, after the play by Maruice Maeterlink
Schaunard
John Copley's enduring production of one of the most famously melodious and popular of all operas is a classic of the Royal Opera repertory. With historically accurate designs by Julia Trevelyan Oman and an excellent cast headed by Hibla Gerzmava and Teodor Ilincai, this 2009 revival, in which conductor Andris Nelsons makes a distinguished Royal Opera House debut, does full justice to Puccini's masterpiece. Recorded 2009.
