It's with no little emotion that Tobias Richter presented what will be his last season at the head of the Grand Théâtre de Genève. As he reaches the end of a ten year tenure, the house's General Director will be entitled to take his bow with a feeling of mission accomplished: the company has survived undamaged by the move to its temporary home at the Opéra des Nations (a structure which had been used once already, for the Comédie-Française), and after three years of major renovations, the Geneva audience will be able to see the Grand Théâtre's ambitious productions in its proper home.
But before the grand reopening in the place de Neuve, several new productions are still scheduled for the Opéra des Nations. Bizet's Carmen will open the season, staged by Reinhild Hoffmann, a well-known personality in the dance world. Under the baton of John Fiore, the title role will be taken by the warm voice of Ekaterina Sergeeva, while ebullient tenor Sébastien Guèze will be watched with interest as he makes his début as Don José.
October will see the arrival in Geneva of a coproduction which delighted the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord: John Gay's The Beggar’s Opera, a baroque musical black comedy depicting the low life of London, will be conducted by William Christie. set in giant cardboard containers by the ingenious director Robert Carsen. The season's third new opera production, Mussorgsky's Boris Godounov, brings together once more director Matthias Hartmann and conductor Paolo Arrivabeni, who collaborated on a refined Bohème two years ago which particularly impressed us. Mikhail Petrenko and Alexey Tikhomirov share the title role. Geneva's safe pair of hands Melody Louledjian sings Xenia, Swiss mezzo Marina Viotti, recent prizewinner at the Kattenburg Competition, sings Fyodor.
The new year festivities will feature hilarious opera-within-an-opera Viva la Mamma !; Laurent Pelly, a frequent visitor to Geneva in Richter's time here, stages a dizzying coproduction which has already had the Opéra de Lyon audience in stitches. As a croaking matron in charge of an opera troupe which disintegrates as the story unfolds, Laurent Nauri will be demonstrating a hitherto unexpected expansion of his baritone voice and comedic gifts. With the usual Orchestre de la Suisse Romande taking a break from the pit, it will be the Orchestre de Chambre de Genève that performs Donizetti's score, under young conductor Gergely Madaras.
The wooden theatre of the Opéra des Nations will be dismantled and heading off to China, but before that happens, it will host one final new production: in January, the Peking Opera Company will stage a typically Chinese show based on Goethe's Faust.
In 2019, therefore, performances will take place in the original Grand Théâtre at the place de Neuve on the left bank of the Rhône. Festivities open at the renovated house on February 12th with no less than Wagner's imposing Ring Cycle. Geneva will be able to reacquaint itself with Dieter Dorn's sober staging, which impressed us in 2014, and Ring lovers will appreciate the chance to see the full cycle of operas in six days. Georg Fritzsch conducts a cast which includes Mikhail Petrenko, Aleksey Tikhomirov and the eagerly anticipated, explosive voice of Petra Lang as Brünnhilde.