Opera often takes the audience to exotic locations – 19th-century French composers, in particular, were fascinated by the orient. India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) are among the far-flung destinations for audiences in Liège next season, along with Japan, Peru, Eldorado and ancient Babylon. Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège presents six new productions for the 2019-20 season under general and artistic director Stefano Mazzonis di Pralafera, including one of the greatest challenges for any company, Verdi’s Don Carlos.
For a house that revels in the Italian repertory, it’s surprising that a standard tear-jerker such as Madama Butterfly was last presented in Liège way back in 2001. A co-production with the Puccini festival at Torre del Lago, Mazzonis’ staging will doubtless be broadly traditional in flavour – a style that is popular with Liège audiences. Praised for her “consummate acting skills” in Zurich in 2017, Svetlana Aksenova shares the title role with Japanese soprano Yasko Sato. Taking on the thankless role of Pinkerton – the American naval officer who marries his teen bride then abandons her – are Alexey Dolgov and Dominick Chenes.
Léo Delibes’ Lakmé was premiered in 1883 at the Opéra Comique in Paris and has been in and out of the repertory ever since, yet interest in it has been sustained thanks to two hit musical numbers: Lakmé’s “Bell Song” – which tests even the best coloratura technique – and the “Flower Duet” for Lakmé and her faithful slave, Mallika. Davide Garattini Raimondi’s new staging features rising Belgian soprano Jodie Devos, who is perfectly suited for the vocal demands of the Indian priestess, while Philippe Talbot sings the British officer, Gérald, who falls in love with her. Another Belgian, baritone Lionel Lhote, sings Nilakantha, Lakmé’s father, a Brahmin priest who swears revenge for the affront to his daughter’s honour.
Set just across the Palk Strait that separates India from Sri Lanka, Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles is another French opera that dips in and out of fashion. Like Lakmé, it features the tribulations of a young priestess who falls in love; here, two pearl fishermen had put their friendship ahead of their mutual love of this priestess, Leïla, only for their paths to cross again years later. Passions are reignited, friendships are tested, and an heroic deed from the past is uncovered, with tragic consequences. Annick Massis sings Leïla in a revival of Yoshi Oïda’s characteristically spare, but beautiful staging, while Cyrille Dubois – a splendid tenor – and Pierre Doyen sing Nadir and Zurga, the men who are in love with her.