A curiously uninvolving Tosca in Darmstadt

By Peter Connors, 18 September 2017

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Reviewed at Staatstheater Darmstadt: Großes Haus, Darmstadt on 17 September 2017

Puccini, Tosca

Will Humburg, Conductor

Eva-Maria Höckmayr, Director

Julia Rösler, Set Designer, Costume Designer

Izabela Matuła, Floria Tosca

Mickael Spadaccini, Mario Cavaradossi

Krzysztof Szumański, Baron Scarpia

Nicolas Legoux, Cesare Angelotti

Michael Pegher, Spoletta

Wiktor Czerniawski, Sciarrone

Thomas Mehnert, Sacristan

Staatsorchester Darmstadt

A heavy crown: austere Monteverdi at the Staatsoper

Hugo Shirley, 13th December

The Staatsoper's new L'incoronazione di Poppea is serious, intelligent but short on fire.

***11

A Tale of Two Tannhäusers

Charlotte Valori, 27th July

Eva-Maria Höckmayr's brilliantly unsettling double vision of Tannhäuser sees our hero both being, and watching himself being overwhelmed by psychic anguish, appalled at the futility of pleasure, and tortured by his savage envy of salvation.

****1

Strawinskys The Rake's Progress am Theater Freiburg

Christoph Wurzel, 6th January

Erhellend, kurzweilig, großartig gespielt und gesungen kam Strawinskys Opernparodie auf die Freiburger Bühne.

****1

Im Nebel verloren: Das Märchen vom Zaren Saltan in Hannover

Svenja Koch, 15th January

Eine packende musikalische Gestaltung steht in der Neuinszenzierung einer Regieidee, die sich nicht auf die Bühne übersetzen lässt, gegenüber.

**111

Herrschermoral am Tiefpunkt: L'incoronazione di Poppea in Berlin

Christoph Wurzel, 26th November

Lebendiger kann eine 300 Jahre alte Oper nicht sein. An der Staatsoper Unter den Linden wurde Monteverdis Oper in der großartigen Inszenierung von Eva-Maria Höckmayr wieder aufgenommen und begeisterte erneut das Publikum.

*****

Großes Hörerlebnis und prächtiges Schauvergnügen

Christoph Wurzel, 9th March

Grandiose Bilder und die exzellente musikalische Umsetzung bescheren dem Publikum einen insgesamt beeindruckenden Opernabend.

****1

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Peter Connors

Peter has been attending concerts and operas enthusiastically since his parents took him to see The Mikado in Liverpool when he was a boy of ten and to a “family concert” given by the RLPO a year or so later. Peter studied Modern Languages at Worcester College, Oxford and Law in Manchester. After spending twenty years as a pensions lawyer in Manchester, he retrained as a teacher of English as a foreign language, which took him to Germany and to Serbia. With the onset of the pandemic he returned to the UK and now works online and frequents concert halls and theatres in the North West of England.