Elisabeth Söderström

Göran Gentele (1917 - 1972) was a Swedish actor, director, and opera manager. He studied at The Royal Dramatic Theatre's acting school 1944-46, followed by acting and directing theatre and film, became artistic director of the Swedish Royal Opera in 1963 and of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1972.

Elijah Moshinsky’s atmospheric production, designed by Mark Thompson, sets the stage for this gripping performance of Tchaikovsky’s passionate setting of Pushkin’s classic novel. Valery Gergiev’s idiomatic and authoritative conducting inspires a superb cast, headed by Plácido Domingo (Ghermann), breathtaking in his portrayal of a man unraveling toward suicide. Galina Gorchakova is Lisa, the woman he loves and destroys, Dmitri Hvorostovsky lends a superb voice and regal bearing to Prince Yeletsky; and Elisabeth Söderström is hair-raising as the old Countess. Olga Borodina is Paulina and Nikolai Putilin is Count Tomsky.

Already in his childhood, Pablo Picasso shows talent for painting and is sent to the Academy of Arts in Madrid. He becomes a painter but has to live in Paris in poverty. But one day he is discovered by a rich American millionaire and starts to earn money. But he wastes his talent by painting plates. He meets the famous people of the 1920s; Gertrude Stein, Alice B. Toklas, Appolinaire, Hitler and Churchill.

Nobel Laureate Harry Martinson's famous poem consists of 103 cantos and relates the tragedy of a space ship which, originally bound for Mars with a cargo of colonists from the ravaged Earth, is ejected from the solar system after an accident and into an existential struggle.

Swedish soprano Elisabeth Söderström takes on Jean Cocteau's The Human Voice.