Columns linked to Henrik Nánási

Third Revival of Tim Albery’s The Flying Dutchman at the Royal...

Sam Smith

The Flying Dutchman, which premiered in Dresden in 1843, is the fourth of Richard Wagner’s thirteen operas, and considered to be his first mature one. This is because it is the first still to be regularly staged, with Wagner himself having ruled that the three that preceded it should never be performed at his Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. The composer had been inspired to write the opera following a stormy sea crossing he made from Riga to London in 1839, and the story is taken from...


Pasolini, Character From Tosca at the Liceu

Xavier Pujol

Tosca, one of the titles in the repertoire that performs best at the box office, has returned to Liceu to reach the figure of two hundred performances in the history ofthe Barcelona theatre. It has done so in a co-production between Liceu and other Spanish and European theatres under the direction of the young Sevillian director Rafael R. Villalobos, aspiring enfant terrible of today's operatic stage direction. Villalobos's Tosca is one of those that needs an instruction manual...


An Eighteen Month Delay but Worth the Wait for Jenůfa at the R...

Sam Smith

Jenůfa, which premiered in Brno in 1904, is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček to a Czech libretto by the composer. It is based on the play Její pastorkyňa by Gabriela Preissová, and is one of the very first operas to be written in prose. Set in a Moravian village in the nineteenth century, the plot concerns a series of tangled relationships that derive from the fact that two fathers both married twice, and had a child by three of their four...


Cavalleria - Pagliacci: Alagna's Great Tour de Force

Xavier Pujol

Christmas is coming and Liceu, like many other theatres, has decided once again to offer an attractive programme for the non-specialised audiences, who on these festive dates decide, perhaps for the only time in the season, to go for one night at the opera. On this occasion, the offer has consisted in the traditional double act integrated by Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci, the famous pair of short verismo operas, which tradition has transformed into an unbreakable matrimony. In...


Excellent Performances Lift Simon Boccanegra at the Royal Oper...

Sam Smith

Simon Boccanegra, originally of 1857 but revised in 1881, has not traditionally been seen as Verdi’s greatest creation. When, however, in 2010 Plácido Domingo took on the title role, his first as a baritone, at the Royal Opera House in Elijah Moshinsky’s 1991 production, it injected a new level of interest into the piece. English National Opera got in on the act with a ‘film noir’ production in 2011, while Moshinsky’s version enjoyed a further revival...


A Gory but Psychologically Intense Salome at the Royal Opera H...

Sam Smith

Despite only being mentioned briefly in the New Testament, the character of Salome has certainly caught the imagination as she has pervaded art, literature and music over the centuries. In the Gospels of Matthew and Mark she is described as a girl who pleased King Herod so much at his birthday feast with her dancing that he promised her anything she desired. After consulting Herodias, the husband of Herod and her mother, she asked for the head of John the Baptist on a plate, with Herodias...