ROH 2011/12 season now out!

Aeneas defeats Turnus, by Luca Giordano, 1634-1705.

Please see for details of the season the ROH announcement.

So let's see how we faired... It's a bit of a mixed bag to me , with good news and not so good news both for new productions and revivals.

As you can see the Troyens will be exciting :-) We still need to find out who else will be singing besides Jonas Kaufmann, Anna Caterina Antonacci as Cassandre and Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek as Didon, but it is good news all the way with Tony Pappano and David McVicar on the team as well. This will premiere on June 25th 2012.

More good news come with Il Trittico, to kick off the next season with the premiere on September 12th 2011. It will be continued by Richard Jones and conducted by Tony Pappano and will feature Anja Harteros and Eva-Maria Westbroek. Great news to have Anja Harteros finally back at the ROH!! And she will be back some more ;-)

Much less exciting is the presence of baritone Lucio Gallo and tenor Aleksandrs Antonenko. Both good singers certainly, but for me somehow missing the wow factor. My issue is however not so much related to the Trittico, but to the production which closes the season, a revival of Verdi’s Otello the season, from July 12th 2012. Antonio Pappano conducts the production by Elijah Moshinsky with Aleksandrs Antonenko, Anja Harteros and Lucio Gallo in the principal roles. Pappano is great news and for me together with Anja's Desdemona two very powerful reasons to go and see this! Also, because this for me is the Domingo-production and will have a nice flavour to see it live! But, and for me the buts are big.... this is not a soprano opera, or not only.. Unless all 3 leads are equally powerful it can never be all it can be..... However, to be honest no idea who could do Jago justice today..... But there must be more Otellos out there, who can not only sing the role decently, but truly inhabit it. This will still be a must see for me at least, but i have a feeling i will wish many times i was hearing something different. Honestly, i almost wish somebody would have tried to convince Domingo to do it one last time, i am pretty sure he would still be up to it in a way that would still be memorable. But, it is what it is.

Another piece of good news is the new (well, visiting from Salzburg) Rusalka, premiere February 27th 2012. Camilla Nylund, Bryan Hymel and bass-baritone Alan Held great reasons to go, but for me the main one is the debut at the ROH of conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

Moving on, we get a new opera, Miss Fortune by Judith Weir, co-commissioned by The Royal Opera and the Bregenz Festival, where it premiere in July 2011. The cast will be lead by soprano Emma Bell and South African baritone Jacques Imbrailo, with former ENO Music Director Paul Daniel conducting. Crossing fingers for this to be a good one. The premiere at the ROH will be on March 12th, 2012.

The last new production in the main house will be ... Falstaff. Why this and not Forza, Ballo, Ernani, Luisa Miller, etc i don't know. But the production will be by Robert Carsen, which should hopefully make it interesting and Daniele Gatti is conducting, which i am very much looking forward to! The cast is: Italian baritone Ambrogio Maestri, with Puerto Rican soprano Ana María Martínez as Alice Ford, Slovak baritone Dalibor Jenis as Ford, Canadian contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux as Mistress Quickly, and American soprano Amanda Forsythe and Spanish-born tenor Joel Prieto as the young lovers, Nannetta and Fenton. All nice and good, however can you think of a really good Falstaff to have in this new production???? Probably the same name will come to your mind as it does to mine, and so i will ask the question that i think more people than me will think about: Why no Bryn? Terfel of course....

Why isn't he doing Falstaff and more importantly.. . why on earth is he not doing Hans Sachs?????????? Yes, we are getting a revival of Meistersinger by Graham Vick (why not take the production from Cardiff last year, it was great!?!!), conducted by Antonio Pappano (the good news about this production!) and with baritone Wolfgang Koch in his Royal Opera debut as Hans Sachs, New Zealand tenor Simon O’Neill as Walther, Australian baritone Peter Coleman-Wright as Sixtus Beckmesser, and British artists soprano Emma Bell as Eva, tenor Toby Spence as David and bass John Tomlinson as Veit Pogner. Well... Simon O'Neill will probably be a very nice Walther, but i have many questions about the rest. Koch is again an ok singer, whom i've seen as Telramund and Pizzaro and i didn't find him special in either...Sachs????? hm.... And i still remember the warmth and sheer musicality of Brindley Sherratt as Pogner in Cardiff and at the Proms. With all due respect to Mr Tomlinson, if his recent Inquisitor is anything to go by, it's time to let younger singers do some roles and i think this is one of those. Why Sherratt did somethintg as small as the King in Aida and not Pogner honestly beats me. And i never ever counted on the Meistersinger at the ROH without Bryn! I loved the opera and i fell in love with it largely due to him living the role, why the ROH couldn't convince him to come and sing it here i'd like to know. His absence in both Falstaff and Sachs is definitely my biggest dissapointment of the season. Anyway, Meistersinger starts December 19th, 2011.

These gaps are almost annoyingly completed by exceptional casting of revivals none of us really wanted to see again so soon. Gotta give it to them, i don't think anyone of us ever missed Rigoletto or Traviata..and there will be indeed 3 of the latter!!! But i can just about see myself trodding not once, but several times to catch each of the casts! Quoting " La traviata by Richard Eyre returns with a series of exciting casts. The first cast (30 September) offers Russian soprano Marina Poplavskaya, American tenor James Valenti and Italian baritone Leo Nucci in the central roles. The second (25 November) features American soprano Ailyn Pérez, Polish tenor Piotr Beczala and British baritone Simon Keenlyside in the lead roles. In the third (2 January) the soprano role of Violetta is shared between Albanian Ermonela Jaho and Russian Anna Netrebko; the tenor role of Alfredo between American Stephen Costello and Italian Vittorio Grigolo; Italian baritone Paolo Gavanelli sings Giorgio Germont."

As to Rigoletto (30 March), conducted by John Eliot Gardiner, with Ekaterina Siurina, Vittorio Grigolo and Royal Opera debutant Greek baritone Dimitri Platanias. No, i didn't want to see any of these, but with these casts i'm bound to be drawn to hear them. Siurina is my favourite Gilda in the last years at the ROH, Platanias i am curious about and maybe Grigolo will be a good duca. If only they can convince David McVicar to come and pimp up his production before somebody else makes a big mess of it, again!

And there is more in the revivals to make your mouth water! Faust (18 September), with Angela Gheorghiu (sharing the role of Marguerite with Malin Byström), Vittorio Grigolo, Dmitri Hvorostovsky and René Pape. Great to see Angela back and above all Pape is finally back!!!! I hope it will not be just a short visit, but that he will be back for much more in the future! It was long overdue.

And there is also this faboulous revival of La bohème (April 28), conducted by Semyon Bychkov, and with Anja Harteros sharing the role of Mimì with Barbara Frittoli opposite Joseph Calleja and Roberto Alagna respectively :-) Niceee one, too bad Angela doesn't want to sing with Roberto again, it would have been lovely to see them in Boheme, but i will be cueing up to see both casts :-) Also great that Andris Nelsons will be back conducting Salome (31 May), with Angela Denoke, Egils Silins, Stig Andersen and Rosalind Plowright.

There is even some belcanto with La sonnambula (2November), starring Eglise Gutiérrez and Royal Opera debutant Spanish tenor Celso Albelo, (which i love, but not with this soprano i'm sorry) and the Fille du régiment (19 April), with Patrizia Ciofi and Colin Lee in the leading roles. Still no Lucia, why on earth this is such a no-no in this House i have no idea.... No Elisir, although i was hoping for a revival, Rolando Villazon still ows us a run of this from a couple of yeas back ;-)

Thank God no Carmen or Tosca ;-)

Last but not least as they say the Mozart trio: Don, Nozze and Cosi. Now if only they had decided to skip Cosi the current season! I'm afraid it will be too soon for another revival of that, trio or no trio.... The casts are all worth hearing though and i can take a lot more Mozart from these ;-) Here's the detail: Don Giovanni (21 January), Così fan tutte (27 January) and Le nozze di Figaro (11 February). Don Giovanni conducted by Constantinos Carydis (one to look out for!), with 2 Don's - Gerald Finley and Erwin Schrott! Colin Davis will conduct Così fan tutte and the cast includes soprano Malin Byström, tenor Charles Castronovo, soprano Rosemary Joshua, baritone Thomas Allen, and debutant Nikolay Borchev. Le nozze di Figaro by is conducted by Antonio Pappano (another one to look our for ;-))))), with Simon Keenlyside (yepeee!!!), Aleksandra Kurzak (also yepee!) , Kate Royal and Ildebrando D’Arcangelo.

Upsy, almost missed this! Der fliegende Holländer(Jeffrey Tate; Anja Kampe, Falk Struckmann, Endrik Wottrich, Stephen Milling). A production i really liked, which i am glad is being revived and the singing should be quite good as well :-)


And next year in June i belive we have a special Placido celebration, where apprently i will get part of my wish as he is said to be doing Act 2 of Rigoletto, then also from Simon Boccanegra and act 3 of Otello, hurray :-) I might get to hear Placido as a tenor once in my life live after all! :-))))

And if i got it right the season will continue through the summer right into the next with probably the Ring. Details on all of that to follow on the ROH site.

Generally satisfying season, with many great things to look forward to, even if some casts probably didn't end up as they were planned or are not really what i would have expected at the ROH. But, definitely looking forward to the season, there is something in everything to draw me into the House and in all but one case i think it is also more than just the music itself :-)

Aeneas leaving Dido - Pompeo Batoni 1747