I Capuleti e i Montecchi with Anna and Elina on WDR 3 (13th December 2009 - 20:05 - 23:00)

Rolando cancels "Manon" next year with Anna at the ROH

It was announced today that Rolando will not be Anna's DesGrieux in the ROH's Manon production next year. He will be replaced by the young italian tenor Vittorio Grigòlo.

Click here for the whole article about


Thanks to Delia for the info

No concert at the red square ?!

The concert isn't on Jonas' schedule anymore, his first date at this season is first on 15th at the ROH.

Furthermore this is out of the latest interview of Bryn Terfel with the Hamburger Abendblatt (cause of his concert together with Anna in Hamburg this month):

[...]Actually was even a concert at the red square in Moscow planned, where next to Netrebko and Terfel also the at the moment precious tenor Jonas Kaufmann was named to sing. This date was cancelled, the perfomance in Hamburg remained. Without Kaufmann.[...]

Really sad that she will now not sing together with Jonas =( I think she should sing with him more often ! Their voices are matching good together !

ROH season schedule 2009/2010 is out !!!!!!!

Today announced the Royal opera house officially the new season schedule 2009/2010 ! and yes Anna and Rolando will sing in a new production of Manon !!!! Click here for viewing the whole season schedule. Well I don't know how I will manage this, but I WILL SEE THIS MANON !!! =)

Anna at the dress rehearsal of Il Trovatore

Today has Anna attended the dress rehearsal of Il Trovatore at the ROH ! For more info look at Intermezzo =)

Rolando as Hoffmann on BBC Radio 3

Click here for the whole (bzw. ^^ detailed) information =)

Thanks to Rhodri for the info !

Yesterday's I Capuleti by Rhodri

I was feeling a bit apprehensive as to whether Anna would sing with the date coming after four performances of Lucia, so I was relieved to learn that she was indeed singing. Although Elina was recovering from a cold the only sign of this was in the care she took when reaching her high notes, and I had the feeling she didn't hit her highest notes on the night, but even so she was once again a singer worth listening to all night long. The highlight? Again the duet between Giulietta and Romeo was magical, a "pin drop" moment. But I would also say that the death sequence too was performed very movingly and I can't wait to see it from a distance not quite as far as I was last night in the upper reaches of the amphitheatre so I can experience the acting which would just top off the singing for me.

The male leads were once again left in the wake of Anna & Elina, although I have to say that Dario Schmunk (Tebaldo) had done some obvious work since I'd seen the dress rehearsal and it was good to see that he has been trying to improve his performance instead of merely just turning up and getting paid. The only problem was that the tempi he'd decided on for his solos were quite slow and did hinder the early rhythm of the performance – but these are small quibbles. Overall it was another great performance, but I think, after seeing it twice now, that the production would benefit from a stronger hand in the direction department, especially where the chorus are concerned – they just seem very static to me and move like a herd, which I assume is what the director was looking for in order to highlight the difference between the personal struggle of Romeo and Giulietta against their public / family ties. But even so, just a little bit of movement would help to combat the sense of feeling that they are marking time until Anna and Elina take to the stage.

Thanks a lot !!! =)

Romeo will get a new Giulietta for tomorrow !!!!

Click here for the whole announcement of the ROH !!!!!!! Well I can understand that she withdraws for tomorrow's performance, better she rests and is on top after again =)


Thanks to Rhodri for the info !!!

Another Capuleti report

Click here

More Capuleti reviews

Click here and here








Thanks to Rhodri for the information !

More reports about I Capuleti

Click here, here, here and here

Thanks to Nerona for the information ; )

I Capuleti time with Anna and Elina

The first photos of the yesterday's premiere at the ROH. I think Anna looks again much better then she did a few weeks ago !! =)))) Click here for the first review.

Report about the dress rehearsal of Anna and Elina's I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the ROH on Friday

Being my first ever dress rehearsal I wasn't sure of what to expect – seeing the orchestra in their everyday street clothes was definitely something I'd never seen before! The constant sound of photographers taking innumerable photographs throughout the performance wasn't something I expected, but curiously as I knew that things would be a bit different on the day they didn't at all bother me. But some things never change and I was treated to a mid-scene change interval battle between an aggressive bottle-wielding grandmother who tried to dislocate a woman's shoulder who was using a mobile phone to text during the performance. Both were in the wrong, but it was quite amusing to see the argument – the younger woman was driven to anger due to the fact that she was a violinist and it's not the greatest thing to do to hit someone on the arm if they earn their living from holding a violin with it. But on to the music!
In the slim programme there was a note reminding people that this was only a dress rehearsal and not a performance – all I can say is that I can't imagine how a performance could be any better than Friday's dress rehearsal. From the opening overture to the closing notes of the final scene my eyes and ears never left the stage. The chorus was in particularly good voice and they certainly filled the house with some muscular singing (although it was noted on the programme notes that extra singers had been drafted in – the ROH chorus can be "unpredictable" on times). They were quickly followed by the triumvirate of Lorenzo (Giovanni Battista Parodi), Capellio (Eric Owens) and Tebaldo (Dario Schmunk). I'll keep my thoughts to myself as to Schmunk's performance as it was only a dress rehearsal and I suspect he may have been saving himself for the performances to come, but Parodi, and especially Owens sang with great clarity and control. To be fair, I think Owens would have made an excellent Capellio on the recent DG Capuleti. All were given great foundations by the conductor Mark Elder and the orchestra who had definitely worked hard to allow the singers to be heard while not losing any of the life and verve in the score.

But I Capuleti's success depends not on the male leads, but more on the female singers and in Anna & Elina I doubt you'll ever find a better pairing. Elina's first notes were sumptuous, and left you in no doubt as to the quality of her voice. What struck me most (apart from her richness of tone) was the "volume" of her voice – the biggest of any of the singers on stage, without her losing any characteristics of her voice. Before this performance I had been a big fan of Magdalena Kozena (and still am) but Elina is now my top mezzo. She received the biggest cheer of the day, and as much as I am a far bigger fan of Anna I have to admit that she gave a magnificent performance. Superb! Or as I shouted – "Brava!"

While Elina had the bigger voice (by a small margin) when Anna sang I was treated to several "shivers down my back", which is one of my markers of a great performance. Up until now I have been treated to hearing very good sopranos who can hold their performance together, but Anna is simply in a different league. When she started to sing my first thought was – she sounds like she does on CD – which is a pretty idiotic statement to make. But you'd be surprised how many singers / actors / bands I've seen that have failed to live up to my expectations. You would think that after watching her performances on DVD that I would be aware of how great an actress she is, but I wasn't prepared for was how much she allowed the role to play her, and not her the role. Even from my eye squinting vantage point in the amphitheatre I was captured by her acting skills – she really does make you "feel" for Giulietta, which given the "lightweight" nature of the opera is some achievement. Getting back to her voice, I was struck at how many different "Anna's" there are. While some singers have a comfort zone they rarely travel outside of she has a wonderful breadth of sounds – and she used these sounds to great effect, allowing the tumult of the character to be presented on stage. You want powerful singing? She has it. Delicate? No problem. Joyful? Again no problem. And as I'm writing this to you both now I'm beginning to understand that it's precisely this ability to change the "appearance" of her voice is what makes her such a great singer. Of course she has a wonderful richness to her voice, but she doesn't allow herself to live off that richness on stage – she explores the vocal life of a character in a way that lesser singers would be afraid to do. When she did let the full force of her voice to come to the fore she was on a par with Garanca, but this happened only once in my mind and is what marked her out to me as giving an astute performance because she played the role of Giulietta and not of Anna Netrebko International Soprano. She was joyfully free of any of the egotism that I've seen with many performers, and she was willing to give other performers their limelight. That to me is the sign of a truly instinctive performer. I think the role of Giulietta is far better for her voice than her recent Lucia – Bellini allows her to sing more freely than Donizetti and this plays to her strengths. She sounded far more comfortable in her singing than she did at the Met – I think this is probably a natural effect of her beginning to lose her "rustiness" after her maternity break, but even so I would like to see Lucia scratched from her future engagements as her voice is better suited to more direct singing rather than hoping around like a bird on a telephone wire, which I admit isn't my favoured type of singing. Apologies for the lack of technical insight, but my musical knowledge is governed by my instincts and not by any academic learning.

The highlight of the performance? Among so many highlights (I can't remember the last time when I was treated to such spellbinding arias from both lead singers) the love duet between Romeo and Giulietta at the end of Act I Scene II was simply beautiful. For me, there was something magical in the silence that followed the ending of the duet – everyone – and I mean everyone in the house (including the photographers and their cameras) – were silent. We were definitely under their spell, and it was with great reluctance that I joined in the applause as I would have loved to have savoured the performance a little longer than I did. Afterwards, as I was sitting on the steps of the National Gallery and looking at the fountains in Trafalgar Square it was all I could hear in my head. And it's all I can hear today!

If there is one aspect I'd like to change about the production it would be in ensuring that the scenery stays in place – I never thought I'd see the day when Anna would push a ten-metre granite column back a few feet! But, as I reminded myself it was only a dress rehearsal…but on a less picky note the production itself was very understated, with the Pier Luigi Pizzi recognising that I Capuleti is an opera that demands not so much from the eye but from the ear. Having said that the costumes worn by the chorus with red capes designating the Capuleti and blue the Montecchi added a glorius dash of colour that was even more striking during a well orchestrated fight sequence.

I can now hardly wait to see a "proper" performance next week!

Hopefully BBC Radio 3 will be recording a performance – it will probably be an April performance as according to Opera magazine there is no scheduled broadcast in March for I Capuleti.


Rhodri


Many, many thanks to Rhodri for his fantastic report !!! You're the best !! =))

Rolando's Hoffmann yesterday at the ROH

I woke at 6.00am on Sunday morning slightly nervous, and very pessimistic about Hoffmann. I caught the 9.48am Cardiff to London train still very pessimistic. I ate lunch at my favourite Italian in London, Carluccio's in Covent Garden, yes…still pessimistic. This pessimism continued as I walked, or rather long jumped, over the street engineering works towards the opera house.

And...he sang! There was a sense of nervousness among the audience beforehand as the lights dimmed. I was waiting for someone to come on stage to announce that he wasn't going to sing, but as Antonio Pappano set the orchestra into motion I knew he would sing...

At first he seemed to be saving his voice, finding out how much he could use it, but as the afternoon wore on he settled and his voice grew in volume - although it wasn't as powerful as I've heard on recordings (or even when he sang at the In Conversation I attended in November), and he was overpowered by Giuletta (Christine Rice) in their duet. But in comparison to where he was several months ago his voice has recovered a great deal, and in other reviews of Hoffmann it was reported that the strength was there, so he may well have been protecting his voice following his recent cold that caused Thursday's cancellation. But the "sound" of his voice, the golden warmth, was there - and in his final arias he did sing with greater conviction (especially his final lines) - and a shiver did run down my back!

His acting was exceptional, allowing the passion of his singing to convey Hoffmann's emotions, making him the standout performer on stage in terms of acting and singing. He was comical, he was sad, he was passionate, he was tragic. He was lost. He was Hoffmann!

Among the other singers Kristine Jepson's effortless soprano made a very enjoyable Nicklausse and Muse, Christine Rice's Giuletta was highly believable and Ekaterina Lekhina's Olympia was mechanically perfect (which should be read as a compliment). Gidon Sacks, although possessing certainly enough vocal heft in the bass passages, did have a slight mishap on the high denouement of "Scintille diamant", but overall he was a convincing bad guy – perhaps he will be better suited to the role a few years from now when he will have built up the required stamina.

Overall, it was a Sunday afternoon worth getting up at 6.00am for, and for this I have the performers, the orchestra (led by Pappano), the ushers of ROH and most importantly Offenbach (and his collaborators) for the musical feast I enjoyed – it certainly kept me warm on my return journey home!

Thanks a lot to Rhodri for his very interessting and very detailed report !

Rolando talking about Les contes d'Hoffmann

Here you can watch a video (from the ROH site), where Rolando talks about Hoffmann. Short but very nice ;)

Rolando's latest interview

Here you can read Rolando's latest interview with the "Times online" magazine. The interview was made because Rolando will stay on stage for 7 performances of "Les contes d'Hoffmann" (The Tales of Hoffmann) from 25th november till 13th december at the ROH.

I think it's a very good interview, hope you enjoy it, too =)

Four years ago a hurricane blew on to the stage of the Royal Opera House. The opera was Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann, the staging a creaky production still best known for its association with Plácido Domingo, who had sung the title role when it was new in 1980. But now it finally had a star worthy to succeed him, a dishevelled figure who stumbled down the stairs on his first stage entry in a frighteningly convincing display of inebriation, and proceeded to thrill us all evening with his reckless charisma.

His name was Rolando Villazón, a Mexican tenor, like Domingo, and possessed, like Domingo, of a darkly baritonal voice wedded to a magnetic stage presence. Suddenly we had a fitting vehicle for the demonic, pathetic, obsessive role of Hoffmann, the poet who can’t separate his Gothic fantasies from his own hopeless life.

Villazón’s performance, his Covent Garden debut, catapulted him into the stratosphere. “It’s one of the most beautiful memories of my career,” he says. I was there, too, and perhaps the most endearing sight was Villazón jumping up and down with excitement as he received his ovation.

Villazón still wears his heart on his sleeve. I think my Dictaphone will never be the same after an hour in close proximity to his exclamations and huge repertoire of quirky sound effects, which fulfil a vital function in propping up his vibrant but sometimes restricted English. But when I meet him at the Royal Opera House during rehearsals for his second Covent Garden run as Hoffmann, opening on Tuesday, he is troubled. “The story of Hoffmann should tell something that goes beyond just a good night at the opera,” he says, eyebrows twitching. “It’s beyond aesthetic impression, beyond entertainment.”

In part this is Villazón’s deeply ingrained commitment to the drama. I ask him about singing the title role in Don Carlo, a punishing role that he took on in May at Covent Garden to very mixed reviews, and if he’s defensive it’s only because he felt he missed out on the dramatic rather than the vocal demands. “I think there was one performance when I had an allergy, which was frustrating for me, not because I was not able to sing the notes, but because I was not able to portray the character.”

But Villazón’s passionate belief in opera “beyond aesthetic impression” goes farther than just histrionics. Last year Villazón almost walked away from his entire career, taking five months off from opera entirely. It was an audacious move, made all the more mysterious because his record label, Deutsche Grammophon, and management kept so quiet about it. It also opened up a huge debate about the 24/7 pressures facing the 21st-cen-tury opera singer.

So, what happened? “I was exhausted! And it was not necessarily vocal cords. My iron levels were low, I was in pain every week. I was trying to be close to my family, but at the same time giving interviews, promoting CDs, and recording, rehearsing and learning roles – it’s too much. It’s very hard to control your career. It’s a psychological goal you have to reach, to be happy not doing all the new productions, and all the wonderful concerts, that it’s actually fine to say no to most of them.”

He insists the break wasn’t to do with any great defects in his voice: more likely, in fact, that it was the inevitable result of the intensity with which he takes on every project, be it a CD (his most recent release, the passionate but patchy Cielo e Mar, is a good example) or a staged opera. “I always knew that with my way of being there was going to be a moment of pain. I just never thought it was going to happen so soon.”

And yet what began as a simple rest cure has taken on deeper implications. Villazón, who when we meet is clutching a a dog-eared copy of Tolstoy’s What is Art?, wants opera, and his place in it, to change fundamentally. “When I stopped I could have stopped for five weeks. I stopped for half a year. I needed to think: why do I do this? Is it for vanity? Is it just for entertainment? No. We need to look for that message that lies in every real artwork.”

It’s a war Villazón is now actively waging, albeit a tad erratically. When he launched Cielo et Mar in the UK, at a lunchtime reception at the Royal Opera House, he insisted on treating his corporate hosts to a speech in which he railed against consumerism. He sings the same tune now, castigating not just himself, but the record industry, the public and the media for trivialising the art-form. “I think the art of singing has become like a sports event with all the celebrity around it. If the hype around opera singers is not sustained by real work and by real talent, it goes away. Fame used to be associated with respect.”

At no point does Villazón warm more to this theme, a colourful Jeremiad about the health of the Western world, than when I touch upon his much-discussed partnership with Anna Netrebko. The two prize assets of Deutsche Grammophon were aggressively marketed by the label as a duo, particularly in Germany and Austria, and until recently they sang together frequently on stage.

They also appear this Christmas in a glossy film adaptation of Puccini’s La Bohème. “A story was told through pictures about me and Anna that was not true or correct,” Villazón recently commented, an observation he now struggles to retract. “It was abused . . .” he concurs, before pausing, perhaps to consider what his label bosses might make of his words. “I think the CD label was just taking what journalism had done already – the ‘dream couple’, the ‘ traumpaar’ – and the whole thing that happened was born in the press. It sustained a couple of projects and then we go to perform with other artists. The danger is to make it all about that. But that’s the problem of our time. Fame obscures.”

I wonder just how much Villazón can really achieve of his twin goals: personal-professional balance, a recording career without the celebrity fluff. He talks of reducing commitments before revealing that he has just jetted off to Berlin to sing for Daniel Barenboim, “one of the most fulfilling nights of my life”. And he admits that image and personality not only bring new converts to opera, but are also essential on stage. “It’s a struggle. You need your individuality, you need a certain arrogance. You cannot just be an empty glass.”

Most of all I wonder whether Villazón really can overcome that “way of being”, that nerve-shredding focus on finding the drama in everything he takes part in. Could he, if only for the sake of his mental well-being, simply accept that opera might just be a job? “Yes, it’s a job, but it’s not a job. It doesn’t finish when you go home. You go home thinking of your character. Your kids go to school and then in the walk from school to home I keep asking myself – what is the purpose of art? It’s a way of living, being a performer.”

Thank Mrs Villazón, a psychologist, for bearing all this angst. “She has been the rock I can hold on to. Without her I would not be here.” So thank her, too, then, for this second crack at Hoffmann.“Four years ago it was still too much about my first Hoffmann, my first Covent Garden . . . it was still too much about Rolando Villazón. Now it’s going to be about Offenbach.” Just remember that after the ovations he’ll keep wondering whether he managed it.