Director Richard Jones, whose previous work at the Royal Opera included the controversial satire about reality TV star Anna Nicole Smith, was not giving much away during a recent Covent Garden Insight event on La Bohème, but soprano Nicole Car described designer Stewart Laing’s new sets as “spectacular”.
Laing won a Tony Award for the musical Titanic, on Broadway, and has worked with Jones on other productions. La Bohème is his Covent Garden debut.
Musically, it should be a great evening with a superb young cast that includes rising Australian soprano Car as tragic heroine Mimi, acclaimed tenor Michael Fabiano as bohemian poet Rodolfo, baritone Mariusz Kwiecień as artist Marcello and soprano Nadine Sierra as Marcello’s on-off girlfriend Musetta while Antonio Pappano conducts the Orchestra of the Royal Opera. There will be a live cinema relay on October 3.
David McVicar’s 2003 Enlightenment staging of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) returns on Tuesday with two casts, the first of which has Siobhan Stagg as Pamina, Mauro Peter as Tamino, Roderick Williams as Papageno, and Sabine Devieilhe as Queen of the Night.
Also at the Royal Opera House Rossini’s tragedy Semiramide, directed by David Alden, opens on November 19 with Joyce DiDonato as the Babylonian queen whose murder of her husband leads to shocking consequences. And Peter Brook’s adaptation of Bizet’s La Tragédie De Carmen is at Wilton’s Music Hall from November 3 performed by the Jette Parker Young Artists (roh.org.uk).
English National Opera has faced major cutbacks over the past year but is fighting back with Verdi’s Aida, with the innovative Phelim McDermott directing Improbable, the theatre company that produced Philip Glass’s hit Satyagraha. If anyone can succeed in staging the tricky triumphal procession, Improbable can. I’ll be looking out for elephants.
American soprano Latonia Moore takes the title role of the captive Ethiopian princess in love with Gwyn Hughes Jones’s Egyptian General Radames.
ENO also stages the world premiere of composer Nico Muhly’s Marnie in November. Based on Winston Graham’s novel, it is a psychological thriller set in late1950s England. Sasha Cooke takes the title role and the cast includes long-standing ENO favourite Lesley Garrett (eno.org).
Opera North kicks off with The Little Greats mix-and-match season of short operas from Saturday, taking in famous one-act shows such as Pagliacci And Cavalleria Rusticana along with rare gems like Janácek’s Osud (Destiny) and Bernstein’s Trouble In Tahiti (operanorth.co.uk).
Welsh National Opera, marking the centenary of the Russian Revolution, opens with the first revival of David Pountney’s 2007 production of Mussorgsky’s saga Khovanshchina on September 23.
Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin has Welsh-born rising star Natalya Romaniw as shy Tatyana who falls for Nicholas Lester’s Onegin.
Third Russia-themed opera is a new edition of Janácek’s From The House Of The Dead about a Siberian prison (wno.org.uk).