Friday, November 15

Tag: Daniele Rustioni

La Fanciulla Del West – Opéra de Lyon
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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...
Carmen – The Metropolitan Opera
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Carmen – The Metropolitan Opera

Carrie Cracknell’s contemporary take aims at reinvigorating this classic with its resetting to present-day America but sadly is mostly firing blanks in its representation of a world that I’m not sure most Americans would even recognise. In an unnamed town somewhere along the border with Mexico, naïve army corporal Don José (Piotr Beczała) falls head over heads in love with Carmen (Aigul Akhmetshina), a seductive and free-spirited girl working at the ammunitions factory that he and his men are guarding. Infatuated, Don José abandons his childhood sweetheart, girl-next-door Micaela (Angel Blue) and neglects his military duties only to lose the fickle Carmen to the glamorous rodeo rider, Escamillo (Kyle Ketelsen). So far so good but given that much of the allure of the original is its s...