Friday, March 29

Tag: Antony Hermus

Opera North: Cavalleria rusticana / Aleko –The Lowry
North West

Opera North: Cavalleria rusticana / Aleko –The Lowry

Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana is usually paired with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci but director Karolina Sofulak has made an inspired choice to pair it with Rachmaninov’s rarely heard Aleko with some subtle and intricate linking of the two pieces which by and large comes off. In Cavalleria rusticana, it transpires that Turiddù (Andrés Presno) and Lola (Helen Évora) were once lovers, but when he left to join the army, Lola married another man, Alfio (Robert Hayward). Although Turridù finds consolation in the arms of Santuzza (Giselle Allen), his obsessive passion for Lola still burns fiercely as he supports his mother Lucia (Anne-Marie Owens), setting the stage for a tale of faithlessness, jealousy and violence, set in a rural community where the church maintains an iron grip on the souls o...
Opera North: Trouble in Tahiti – The Lowry
North West

Opera North: Trouble in Tahiti – The Lowry

Trouble in Tahiti is a one-act opera in seven acts, composed by Leonard Bernstein, who is perhaps best known for his musical West Side Story. It is one of Bernstein’s darker and more autobiographical works, based on the relationship between the composer’s parents, combining themes of domestic struggle and breakdown with operatic melodrama, performed here by Opera North at The Lowry in Salford. The opera is set in the 1950s, and opens with a jazz trio (Laura Kelly-McInroy, Joseph Shovelton, Nicholas Butterfield) singing about domestic bliss in an unspecified suburb in the form of a radio advertisement for the American Dream. The reality, however, is very different, as we soon follow the story of Sam (Quirijn de Lang) and Dinah (Sandra Piques Eddy), a young couple whose marriage is colla...