Friday, May 10

Tag: Pasquale Orchard

Opera North: Così Fan Tutte – Hull New Theatre
Yorkshire & Humber

Opera North: Così Fan Tutte – Hull New Theatre

Theatre lovers enjoyed more than three hours of a most delightful opera on Thursday night, as Opera North brought its production of Così Fan Tutte to the Hull New Theatre. I say delightful because, unlike others I have seen, I found this very easy to understand from the get go, though it helped that it was sung in English. The title translates as “they’re all the same”, describing professor Don Alfonso’s take on all women. Dutch baritone Quirijn de Lang played the professor with the right amount of menace, cunning and gravitas, as well as more than a hint of mischief. The professor is the cause of all the shenanigans on the night, betting two lovestruck young men that their faithful amours would cheat on them, because in his mind women are “all the same”. He challenges the ...
Opera North: La rondine – The Lowry
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), ...