Tuesday, December 17

Tag: Chiara Isotton

Don Carlos – Operaen, Det KGL Teater
REVIEWS

Don Carlos – Operaen, Det KGL Teater

There are different versions of Verdi’s masterpiece about love and duty with director Davide Livermore’s new production drawing on the 1884 Milan version, performed in Italian, which jettisons the original’s scene-setting first act, and relies upon strong performances from the cast to move the production along, which it gets here in droves. It's a tough story with far too real parallels to ongoing events in the Ukraine and Middle East which serves to reinforce the piece’s uncompromising assessment of the ways of human nature as we are thrust via a love triangle into a courtly world, although not 16th Century Spain here, but rather that of the Franco era, emboldened by costume designer Mariana Fracasso, and to which the principles of religious Inquisition and destructive suppression of p...
La Fanciulla Del West – Opéra de Lyon
REVIEWS

La Fanciulla Del West – Opéra de Lyon

Puccini is renowned for serving up negative consequences for his leading female characters, so it was with some relief and pleasant surprise that in what he considered his best opera, this Wild West girl decides who she wants and gets it, gun in hand. Created in 1910 at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, this is its first presentation in Lyon with conductor Daniele Rustioni passionately matching the vitality of the music to the violent and elementary feelings unravelling on stage under the direction of Tatjana Gürbaca as we explore questions about justice, forgiveness, and love. During the California Gold Rush in a frontier mining town populated by ruthless bandits and tough-talking but good-hearted miners, remarkable female tavern-keeper Minnie (Chiara Isotton), the miners, and the cynical...