Opera Chic

Step into the Ice Princess' Thunderdome

Welcome to another edition of Thunderdome -- with Roberto Alagna's mammaries and Lise Lindstrom's ~living legend, you could look but don't touch, cause she's cold as fire, hot as ice~ for les Chorégies d'Orange festival's Turandot.

Tonight's the last performance of the Michel Plasson-conducted, Charles Roubaud-directed Puccini fairytale but the relay will be available to watch online after the performance tonight.

Christmas in August: Damiano Michieletto's Bohème in Salzburg

(Above: Anna Netrebko as Mimì and Piotr Beczala as Rodolfo)

Attention Mall Shoppers: Thirty-seven year old Venezian opera director Damiano Michieletto's idea for La Bohème -- opening tomorrow night at the Salzburg Festival with Beczala as Rodolfo, Trebs as Mimì and Machaidze as Musetta -- is Paris as a cross-section framed within Google Maps and dropped into a mall. The young bohemians are mallrats who live in "a glorious age of illusion and utopias, like children, irresponsible. Rodolfo is snappy and irritable and Mimi is fragile." Judging by costumes, it's set in the ~other~ mall where kids clocked each other with masterlocks and stole from Hot Topic, Spenser's and Chess King.

Tomorrow night's la prima will start at 7:00pm on Radio3, streaming live from the Grosses Festspielhaus, featuring interviews with Michieletto and Gatti on the podium with the Wiener Philharmoniker. All photos Silvia Lelli.

(Nino Machaudze as Musetta)

(Anna Netrebko as Mimì)

Omer's Inquisition

Speaking of accordion fetishists (ENO post above), Haaretz runs an immense, revealing profile on young Israeli conductor Omer Wellber, which delves into everything, really, everything -- including this:

What other kinds of responses have you gotten for being so young and Israeli?

"After I conducted 'Tosca' at La Scala in February and I got the kind of reviews I'd never had before, it seems there were some people who couldn't abide that and they started a rumor that I was conducting at La Scala because my family donates millions to the Opera House. They said I was Barenboim's illegitimate son from a lover in Israel and only now when he learned that I was talented did he take me in ..."

Richard Jones for the ENO's Julietta

Bohuslav Martinů's seldomly-staged Julietta will go on at the ENO this fall in a new production (supported by the Bohuslav Martinů Foundation) by Richard Jones, whose surealist production premiered in 2006 at the Opéra national de Paris.

The action's based on a 1930s French surrealist play, set in a small seaside town in the ether between dreams and reality -- which Jones' visualized as a giant, scary accordion with an appetite for human flesh, kind of like Maximum Overdrive for Czech opera nerds. Don't quote us on that, tho. 

The ENO's MD Edward Garder conducts Julia Sporsén in the title role and Peter Hoare as Michel, which opens on September 17 and runs five replications. Photos below are from the ENO's flickr.

Asher Fisch's Orgasmic Turandot for The Seattle Opera

Asher Fisch knows how to get butts into the opera house. On describing Puccini's Turandot, which opens at The Seattle Opera next weekend, the Israeli conductor said that the music is an "orgasm of sound."

Watch where you're pointing that finger, buddy...

Teatro Regio di Parma's 2012 Verdi Festival (Leo Nucci +)

Teatro Regio di Parma's October Verdi Festival pairs the local hero's blood, guts & tears opera with the sumptuous fall harvest booty -- pumpkin purée wrapped in sweet eggy pasta, deeply-pink veined culatello and spalla cotta, juicy wild game and crisply-bubbling Lambrusco reds. And unbashful pear and apple mostarda. Or not. Or w/e. There's always the Autogrill's reheated pitstop panini.

In October, the petite Parma theater marks the 199th birthday of Maestro Verdi with two operas and a concert -- Rigoletto opens the festival on October 1 with five replications in Pier Luigi Samartini's 1987 production and stars Leo Nucci, Desirée Rancatore and Michele Pertusi, conducted by Daniel Oren.

After a sixty(+) year absense, Verdi's overtly patriotic sausagefest La battaglia di Legnano opens on October 6 and runs four replications in a new production by Pier Luigi Pizzi. It's conducted by Andrea Battistoni and stars William Corrò, Emanuele Cordaro, Gezim Myshketa, Aurelia Florian, Alejandro Roy, Valeriu Caradja, Erika Beretti and Cosimo Vassallo.

The concert falls on Verdi's birthday, October 10,with Inva Mula, Piero Pretti, Leo Nucci and Michele Pertusi singing Verdi's greatest hits.

BBC Music Mag's Twenty/Twenty

BBC Music Mag compiles a list of its twenty landmark opera productions over the past twenty years -- like Teatro Regio's 2008 Thaïs by Stefano Poda (above) and below, Glyndebourne's 2009 Fairy Queen by Jonathan Kent.

A canapé teaser -- we're plating the groundbreaking productions by Robert Carsen & Graham Vick & Patrice Chéreau & Claus Guth for the full buffet.

Hans Zimmer's Tribute to Aurora

The composer behind Christopher Nolan's Batman movie soundtracks (including the latest The Dark Knight Rises) bears witness to the 12 victims and 58 injured during the Aurora, Colorado tragedy with a new composition. The 8.5 minute tribute, penned in the aftermath of the shooting, can be downloaded for a fee ranging from 10 cents to $2,500 which will benefit the Aurora Victim Relief org.

 

Esa-Pekka Salonen Quicksilver

Earlier today in the land of Hobbits, fleet-footed Finnish conductor/composer Esa-Pekka Salonen carried the Olympic Torch 300 meters through London. Norse gawd-warrior DNA wrapped in a white tracksuit, hustling to a soundtrack of Beethoven's seventh with his Philharmonia Orchestra (video below) and blond hair whisping in the wind. Newton's First Law of Motion byotches!

 

 

Grigolo, Chung Rock Puccini @ Choregies d'Orange

Vittorio Grigolo as Rodolfo in rehearsal for "La Boheme", July 4,
2012: opening night is this coming saturday night at Choregies d'Orange (photo AFP Gerard Julien).

Below, after the jump, the opera's conductor, Myung-Whun Chung.

Roberto Bolle In Paris @ Berluti Party for Fashion Week, Les Jardins du Palais Royal

This past Friday Roberto Bolle was at the Berluti party in Paris at the Jardins du Palais Royal, rocking a Berluti total look and hanging out with Diane Kruger, Dita von Teese, Carine Roitfeld, Ellen von Unwerth and Berluti Creative Director, Alessandro Sartori (photo Stéphane Feugère)