Friday, November 15

Tag: Kerem Hasan

Opera North: La rondine – The Lowry
20Nov By Mark DavorenNo Comments
North West

Opera North: La rondine – The Lowry

The curtains opens to 1920’s Paris in director James Hurley’s take on Puccini’s take of the La Traviata tale and with the backdrop of Leslie Travers rich and glamorous set, suitably illuminated by Paule Constable and Ben Pickersgill, we meet Magda (Galina Averina), the mistress of a wealthy banker, Rambaldo (Philip Smith), but when the poet Prunier (Elgan Llŷr Thomas) reads her palm and predicts that like la rondine – the swallow – she will travel south in her pursuit of happiness, the die is cast for what is to come. When she meets the young Ruggero (Sebastien Guèze), glamour soon turns to decadence as she follows him to the nightclub Bulliers where they fall in love and decide to run away to the south of France, and with Prunier equally smitten with Magda’s maid, Lisette (Claire Lees), t...
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Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress –Liverpool Empire
2Dec By Mark DavorenNo Comments
North West

Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress –Liverpool Empire

The art historian in me jumped at the chance to see William Hogarth’s most-celebrated caricature brought to life in Stravinsky’s opera with a libretto by none other than celebrated poets WH Auden and Chester Kallman, and a classic cross-hatched set design from David Hockney providing a very fitting tribute to the original satire. Under the direction of John Cox, we open to our hero Tom Rakewell (Frederick Jones) with his very literal Anne Trulove (Soraya Mafi) in the garden of her father (Stephen Richardson). The devil makes work for idle hands and it’s the appearance of Nick Shadow (Sam Carl) who delivers a Faustian-like pact, but one very much of the devil’s making, that sees our rake’s progress well and truly begin as we move from the brothel education of Mother Goose (Fiona Kimm) to...
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