First Rate Cast and Grand Production in The Sicilian Vespers at the Royal Ballet and Opera, Covent Garden

Giuseppe Verdi’s The Sicilian Vespers of 1855, set to a French libretto by Eugène Scribe and Charles Duveyrier from their 1838 work Le duc d’Albe, tells of the French occupation of Sicily in the thirteenth century. Prior to the opera’s opening the Sicilian patriot Jean Procida was exiled and the French conqueror Guy de Montfort, who became the island’s governor, violated a Sicilian woman who subsequently had a son called Henri. At times the Sicilians are...

Based on Victorien Sardou’s 1887 French-language play, Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca of 1900, with a libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, not only occurs in a specific time and place, but on a precise date that can be linked to an historical event. All of the action takes place during the afternoon, evening and early morning of 17 and 18 June 1800, following the Battle of Marengo between Napoleon’s army and Austrian forces. The Austrians were initially...

Fairy tales and witches are often – sugar-coated in disguise – terrible narratives full of anguish, loneliness, and fear. Beneath the barely concealed veneer of culture, they pulse with our “dark sides”, our most disorderly desires, alien to any moral framework. This is why it is so educational and necessary to tell these stories to our children from an early age, so they can name and shape their fears to grow up healthy. We must give a name and face to our fears...

Charles-François Gounod’s Faust, with a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris on 19 March 1859. It underwent several revisions over the following decade, including the insertion of a ballet into Act V to meet the expectations of grand opera, and was extremely popular in the nineteenth century. It was the work with which New York’s Metropolitan Opera opened for the first time on...

In the program booklet, Calixto Bieito stated regarding his work as stage director of Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the Liceu that “the best lie is the truth,” referring to the fact that he does not judge but merely presents the grotesque absurdities of the real world with clarity, and does so through opera—if anyone is to learn something from it, let them do so. Applied to Giulio Cesare, this means presenting the characters as an extravagant tribe of super-millionaires...

The success that Nadine Sierra achieved last January with La Traviata was already enormous, but what she has achieved now with La Sonnambula is even greater and consecrates her as the new undisputed queen of the Liceu. Sierra has it all: her voice is beautiful, warm and lyrical in the centre, brilliant and sharp at the top, her breath control is exceptional, and her projection is optimal. She has an easy stratospheric treble, regulates the dynamics exquisitely in any area of the...