The trickle of new season announcements now starts to develop into a flood as more and more opera companies and orchestras announced their 2017-18 line-ups. Here are a few of our highlights from those announced recently.
Dutch National Opera’s whole season is a bit of a highlight, in truth. Not many companies could boast 11 new productions in a season! A few are co-productions, but of stagings either yet to be seen (The Rake’s Progress at Aix and La clemenza di Tito at Salzburg) or only recently premiered (Tristan und Isolde in Rome and Paris). Of the completely new, Christof Loy tackles Verdi’s sprawling La forza del destino is a top pick, starring local favourite Eva-Maria Westbroek. There’s also an intriguing double bill set in Florence – Puccini’s familiar (and very funny) comedy Gianni Schicchi and the much rarer Zemlinksy one-acter A Florentine Tragedy. Towards the end of the season, Tobias Kratzer directs a new Tales of Hoffmann, while George Benjamin’s new opera Lessons in Love and Violence receives a Dutch debut just a month after its world première in London.
There’s a degree of safety about the Metropolitan Opera’s new season. In January, Peter Gelb cancelled the scheduled new production of La forza del destino due to “budgetary concerns” in adapting the production (already seen at ENO) for the Met’s stage. It would have been director Calixto Bieito’s Met debut. That leaves new productions of operatic staples – Norma, Tosca (swiftly replacing the much-reviled Luc Bondy staging) and Così fan tutte – hardly ground-breaking stuff. Massenet’s Cendrillon makes its Met debut, in Laurent Pelly’s charming production already seen in Santa Fe and London. However, The Met will present the US première of Thomas Adès new opera The Exterminating Angel. The Met is about star singers though and the usual suspects will be queueing up, including Vittorio Grigòlo (in Hoffmann), Anna Netrebko and Kristine Opolais (both as Tosca), and Joyce DiDonato (Cendrillon).
Washington National Opera hosts Francesca Zambello’s new Aida, previously seen in San Francisco with a cast of huge voices, including Tamara Wilson and Amber Wagner who share the title role. At the other end of the operatic scale, Handel’s Alcina has a splendid cast – Angela Meade, Daniela Mack and Elizabeth DeShong. The big new staging of the season is Don Carlo, a co-production with Opera Philadelphia and Minnesota Opera by Tim Albery. Picks among the double casting are Latonia Moore (Elisabetta), Jamie Barton (Eboli) and Quinn Kelsey (Posa).
Next season, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra waves farewell to its much-loved, energetic maestro, Yannick Nézet-Séguin after ten years at the helm. He conducts programmes including Bruckner – a YNS speciality – Mahler and Messiaen and teams of with long-time friend and collaborator, Janine Jansen for Britten’s Violin Concerto. Former chief conductor Valery Gergiev returns, along with his Mariinsky Orchestra, for a feast of Stravinsky and Shostakovich.
Jaap van Zweden takes over as music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in September and it’s no great surprise to see Mahler on the bill for the season-opening gala. The orchestra’s legendary former music director Leonard Bernstein is celebrated in his centenary with a Bernstein’s Philharmonic festival. All three of Bernstein’s symphonies are programmed in concerts led by Alan Gilbert and Leonard Slatkin. New works by Anna Thorvaldsdóttir and New York premières by Philip Glass, John Adams and Esa-Pekka Salonen demonstrate commitment to the contemporary scene.
