This October, New National Theatre, Tokyo's opera season opens with back-to-back new productions of early Romantic Italian operas: Vincenzo Bellini’s dreamy sleepwalker La sonnambula and Gioachino Rossini’s heroic final opera William Tell (in the original French version, Guillaume Tell). Neither works have ever been performed in this opera house, which opened in 1997, and in addition, La sonnambula will be the first Bellini work to be staged at the NNTT.
Kazushi Ono, Artistic Director of Opera, explains why he chose these two works to open the season. “La sonnambula was premiered in 1831 and Guillaume Tell two years earlier in 1829, so the two works are from the same period. Bellini’s work is a masterpiece in bel canto, whereas Guillaume Tell is an opera seria and Rossini’s final word in opera. One should recall that Beethoven had only died in 1827, and these two operas represent the dawn of opera romantica. In that sense these two works are linked and that’s why I placed them side by side.”
“Since I became Artistic Director, one of my aims has been to expand the bel canto repertoire, so I am very happy to present a Bellini opera for the first time to our audience. A co-production with Teatro Real Madrid, Gran Teatre del Liceu, and Teatro Massimo in Palermo, it is directed by Bárbara Lluch, the Catalan director, whose works in the theatre I’ve known during my time in Barcelona. Maurizio Benini takes the baton. The master of bel canto, his conducting is romantic yet rigorous and can produce the beautiful lines that are essential to Bellini’s music. I’m pleased he has returned so soon after the commanding Tosca he conducted here in July.”
Ono himself will be conducting the new production of Guillaume Tell, and for the first time. “Guillaume Tell is essentially about the desire for freedom. The Swiss people, suffering under the cruel Habsburg governor Gesler, are seeking to be liberated from his oppressive rule. Such circumstances and sentiments are something our 21st-century audiences can surely understand and empathise with. Rossini portrays this story of confrontation with graceful melodies and harmonies, and the choruses are particularly rousing. I think it’s a great masterpiece, but it’s very long, so I have had to make considerable cuts. However, I have made my own version for this production based on the critical edition in order to maintain the flow of the opera as much as possible. We have a great cast including Gezim Myshketa in the title role and Olga Peretyatko as Mathilde, and I look forward to working with director Yannis Kokkos, who directed our Le Rossignol/Iolanta remotely during the pandemic.”
The other work that Ono will be conducting is composer Toshio Hosokawa’s new opera Natasha, scheduled for August 2025. Hosokawa is a prolific opera composer and has composed seven stage works to date including Matsukaze (2010) and Stilles Meer (2015), but this will be the first opera he has composed specifically for a Japanese opera house. The libretto is by Yoko Tawada, internationally renowned Japanese novelist based in Germany who writes in both Japanese and German.
The story is about an encounter between an Ukrainian girl Natasha (Ilse Eerens) and a Japanese youth Arato (Hiroka Yamashita), who are then lured together to modern hell by the mysterious third character, “Mephisto’s Grandson” (Christian Miedl). It’s a multi-language opera that reflects our society – German, Ukrainian, English and Japanese – and Ono has high hopes that the production will be taken up by international opera houses after its world premiere in Tokyo.
Natasha is the third in NNTT’s series of commissioned works from Japanese composers which Ono initiated as Artistic Director (he also conducted the two previous works, Akira Nishimura’s Asters and Dai Fujikura’s A Dream of Armaggedon). The staging of contemporary opera is something Ono is deeply passionate about, and he says that he would like to bring some existing contemporary operas to Tokyo in the coming years.
“By seeing the staples of the repertoire alongside the newly created works, the audience’s ears and soul will be pulled in different directions in a balanced way. The more we experience the new, the better we understand what it is based on. This will hopefully form the Theatergeist of this opera house. This is my ultimate aim as Artistic Director.”
Kazushi Ono has been in the post of Artistic Director of Opera of the NNTT since 2018, and recently his contract has been extended to 2030. Interestingly his job title is Artistic Director and not Music Director. Previously he has been the Music Director at La Monnaie and Principal Conductor at Opéra National de Lyon. I ask what the difference between his previous jobs and his post at the NNTT.
“As Music Director at La Monnaie and Lyon, I was first and foremost responsible for maintaining the quality of the orchestra as its chief. But here at the NNTT the circumstance is different because this opera house doesn’t have its own resident orchestra, and it works with different symphony orchestras. Many European opera house have both Artistic Director and Music Director and my role is that of the former, so my main job is to decide the programming and the casting, and I am involved in all the productions, both new productions and revivals.”
With the reductions of the subsidy, the weak yen and the general rise in costs including energy bills, NNTT is constantly having to make savings and it cannot be easy for Ono to achieve all the things he would ideally like to, but he has certainly instigated many changes in his time.
He has helped strengthen international exposure of NNTT through his own presence in the European operatic scene and his many contacts, and he has increased co-productions and brought in existing international productions. For example, Mariusz Treliński’s controversial staging of Boris Godunov in 2022 was a co-production with Polish National Opera and last season’s Simon Boccanegra directed by Pierre Audi with sets by Anish Kapoor was a co-production with Finnish National Opera and Teatro Real Madrid, which attracted strong international interest. Furthermore, international audiences attending the operas at the NNTT are visibly increasing.
His stamp is apparent in this season’s revivals too. William Kentridge’s acclaimed Die Zauberflöte, which has been seen in various theatres and festivals, and Àlex Ollé’s Carmen are relatively recent productions that Ono brought into the NNTT repertoire. Actually, Carmen was originally staged during the pandemic in 2021 with strict Covid infection prevention measures in place, so for this revival Ollé will come and recreate the production for a wholly new cast that features Samantha Hankey (Carmen) and Atalla Ayan (Don José).
Creating interesting double-bills has also been one of Ono’s programmatic initiatives, and the Florence-themed billing of Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, originally staged in 2019, will be revived with the same conductor and director team of Ryusuke Numajiri and Jun Aguni.
Apart from the programming, what has impressed me is the strong leadership Ono showed during the early days and months of the pandemic. Covid hit NNTT mid-rehearsal of Giulio Cesare in March 2020 and all the productions until the end of season were cancelled (including Meistersinger which Ono was supposed to conduct). But in October the 2020-21 opera season reopened with Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, overcoming various restrictions on stage and in the auditorium and numerous cast changes. When almost all European houses were closed, Tokyo kept the show going.
“It was gratifying that the board shared our wish to reopen the theatre as soon as circumstances permitted. Also, I am very thankful to the directors who took part via remote and to the Japanese singers who took over the singers who couldn’t travel.”
One of the positive outcomes from that period was that he was able to discover many talented Japanese singers. One such is soprano Atsuko Kobayashi, who jumped into the role of Sieglinde in Die Walküre in March 2021 and gave a superb performance.
“Kobayashi is our star and has become a familiar figure on the NNTT stage,” enthuses Ono. This season Kobayashi will sing the title-role in Madama Butterfly, a role she has sung for many years, in NNTT’s classic and authentic staging by Tamiya Kuriyama.
Finally, looking to the future, it has just been announced that the third edition of the World Opera Forum will be held in the NNTT in June 2028. “This is indeed a great honour and opportunity for us at the NNTT, the first time the Forum will be held in Asia. It’s a gathering of opera professionals from all over the world, and we feel both honoured and responsible. We hope to present a varied and exciting programme for the delegates.”
See all upcoming performances at New National Theatre, Tokyo.
This article was sponsored by New National Theatre, Tokyo.
