As the year draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on a few personal highlights – and the occasional nadir – of 2019 in opera, music and dance. Editing well over a thousand Bachtrack reviews each year places me in the privileged position of having a finger on the classical music pulse around the globe, so this selection allows me to share some of the things I most enjoyed during the year – or sorely wished I had been able to experience “in the flesh” for myself. Click on the links in the text to read the full reviews.
In the UK, it’s been heartening to see three excellent new productions of Britten operas. Deborah Warner’s Billy Budd had already been hailed in Madrid and Rome, so expectations were high for its Covent Garden bow. No disappointment here. The moment when Captain Vere fails to save Billy was truly choking. Last month, The Royal Opera also presented a new production of Britten’s final opera, Death in Venice – a typically stylish David McVicar staging with astonishing singing from Mark Padmore as Aschenbach. Perhaps these productions mark a turn in the composer’s fortunes in a house that hasn’t always paid him his fair dues. Louisa Muller’s ghostly Turn of the Screw was outstanding at Garsington – the finest production I’ve seen at this festival. Although wonderfully sung and acted, it was the staging itself which chilled, especially Malcolm Rippeth’s cunning lighting, not easy to manage in a venue flooded with natural light as performances begin.
Elsewhere at Covent Garden, the highlight was the new Forza del destino, less for Christof Loy’s production than for a lip-smacking cast the likes of which any opera house worth its salt would salivate over: Anna Netrebko, Jonas Kaufmann, Ludovic Tézier, Ferruccio Furlanetto, Alessandro Corbelli… Tézier was a particularly wonderful interviewee back in March, suave, elegant in his turn of phrase, musing on his love for Wagner. Aigul Akhmetshina, Forza’s “B cast” Preziosilla, was another joy, bubbling with infectious enthusiasm about life as a young singer, owning the stage as Carmen.
Operatic life down the road sputters on in fits and starts, although English National Opera’s best work recently has taken place away from its Coliseum home: Noye’s Fludde in East Stratford; Paul Bunyan in the newly refurbished Alexandra Palace; and a joyous Hansel and Gretel in the Open Air Theatre at Regent’s Park. Back at the company’s home base, I was once again hypnotised by Phelim McDermott’s staging of Akhnaten and was delighted that Bob Levine was equally entranced as Philip Glass’ opera made its bow at the Metropolitan Opera a few weeks ago, with Anthony Roth Costanzo once again mesmerising in the title role.
It was encouraging to see three UK productions of Katya Kabanova opening within a few weeks of each other in the spring, perhaps laying to rest the fear that Janáček equates to box office death. On the debit side, did the country really need six stagings of The Magic Flute by the major companies or festivals? Glyndebourne’s was widely seen as the low point of the summer season, an under-baked Konzept set in Hotel Sacher. Of the regional companies, Scottish Opera scored contemporary hits with Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves (at the Edinburgh Festival) and Stuart MacRae’s polar chiller-thriller Anthropocene.
Filed under “Productions I wish I’d seen” comes the first staging for over fifty years of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Wiener Staatsoper, “one of the best productions to come out of the Haus am Ring for a good long time”. Finnish National Opera launched a new Ring cycle with a fabulous-looking Rheingold in September. Franc Aleu’s new Turandot for the Liceu was bursting with video wizardry, while Tobias Kratzer’s production of Der Zwerg for Deutsche Oper was terrific, drawing out parallels with Zemlinsky’s own biography. This talented young director makes his Royal Opera debut in the new year, tackling Fidelio – no easy task. The highlight of Offenbach’s bicentenary was Barrie Kosky’s Orpheus in the Underworld, which caused a stir at the Salzburg Festival, although it’s worth reflecting on the director’s own words – in a brilliant interview by Nadja Dobesch-Warlick – that Offenbach’s music brings joy. “In this day and age, joy is something that is viewed by a lot of people very cynically. But I think that joy has a place in the theatre.” How true.
One of the best productions to play at Opera Australia was Greg Eldridge’s staging of Reimann’s Ghost Sonata, “a thoroughly compelling evening”. We cover a lively opera scene in Boston, where the Lyric Opera presented a “harrowing, gripping production” of Poul Ruder’s The Handmaid’s Tale in May, “where even body language speaks volumes and the audience is a not only a spectator but a complicit participant”. In Philadelphia, Robert Carsen’s magical, bed-hopping Midsummer Night’s Dream finally received its American premiere… 28 years after its debut at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence!