Orgia: Parra and Bieito Recreate Pasolini

Gaetano Donizetti’s 64th opera, Don Pasquale of 1843, represents both the zenith and the end of opera buffa since it stands as one of the finest examples of the genre, and yet there are practically none written after that date that are still in the standard repertoire. Set in Rome, it sees the ageing Don Pasquale disinherit his nephew Ernesto, who loves the young but poor widow Norina, for refusing the woman he had found for him. Even Don Pasquale’s own doctor...

The idea of creating a ‘trilogy’ with the three operas that Mozart composed with libretti by Lorenzo Da Ponte is fantastic. Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte were composed one after the other, a few years apart. There are numerous musical connections between them and more than one underlying dramatic connection as well. Bringing together a kind of ‘Mozart Marathon’ – nine hours’ worth of opera – by presenting the three...

Lohengrin, which premiered in 1850 in Weimar, is the sixth of Richard Wagner’s thirteen operas, and the third he wrote (after Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser) that is still regularly performed today. It stands very much at a crossroads in that it harks back to classical opera in some respects, but in others looks forward to the composer’s later music dramas by including leitmotifs and being essentially through-composed (although some distinct...

Written in 1998 to a libretto by Paul Bentley, Poul Ruders’s The Handmaid’s Tale is based on Margaret Atwood’s eponymous novel of 1985. This means that when he wrote it no one had even heard of Bruce Miller’s television series that aired in 2017. With some qualifications, the opera follows the same plot as the novel in painting a nightmarish vision of the early twenty-first century, which then still lay in the future. It is a world in which a supposedly...

Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata of 1853 is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world today, and the Royal Opera has been putting a special focus on the work in its 2021/22 season. By the end of this month no less than six different singers will have taken on the main role with Lisette Oropesa, Kristina Mkhitaryan and Anush Hovhannisyan having sung it across a dozen performances last autumn. The opera now returns for thirteen outings in April 2022, as well as a live cinema...

Premiering in 1945, with a libretto adapted by Montagu Slater from George Crabbe’s eponymous narrative poem, Peter Grimes focuses on the type of outsider figure that always fascinated Benjamin Britten. Set in a nineteenth century Suffolk coastal village referred to simply as ‘the borough’, it focuses on the clash between Grimes, a hard working fisherman who dreams of wealth and respect, and a narrow-minded and repressive community who will never judge him kindly,...