Opera Now July 2022

Summer 2022: how life has moved on from this time last year. Opera is thriving again, with the festival season in full swing. ‘Covid hesitancy’ is still with us – and not everyone can afford to take risks; but there seems to be new confidence about going out and experiencing the world at first-hand. Audiences, deprived of live performance for almost two years, are flocking to theatres, and although the legacy of streaming and home entertainment endures, most of the opera lovers I speak to say how relieved they are to be back in opera houses, engaging in lively interval chitchat with fellow members of the audience and enjoying real-life engagement with opera, that most visceral of art forms. One question that I am repeatedly asked is whether travelling abroad…

Spot the difference In the May 2022 issue of Opera Now, your correspondent Fiona Hook makes the mistake of equating the historic castrato alto with a contemporary countertenor alto (The Golden Age of the Countertenor, page 22). Not all male altos are the same. The castrato and countertenor voices depend on radically different means of vocal production. The countertenor, alto or soprano, uses only a portion of his vocal cords and stays primarily in his head voice. The castrati, on the other hand, developed strong vocal muscles, used all of their vocal cords, and cultivated their chest voices. As I argued in my article in Early Music America Magazine (EMAg, January 2021), the closest approximation of the castrato voice is not a countertenor but a female mezzo or contralto. Countertenor…

Remembering Anne Howells – the down-to-earth Diva Anne Howells, one of the most popular British opera singers of her day, has died at the age of 81. She was a superb singer-actress, giving vivid portrayals of the characters she sang. Her flare for comedy was especially appreciated in roles such as Mozart’s Dorabella and Cherubino, and she also bought a wistful, thoroughly engaging charm to Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier – which she said was her favourite role. Her introduction to it came with a touch of her characteristic grit when her agent phoned to ask if she could step into a dress rehearsal at Covent Garden because the mezzo singing Octavian had fallen ill. ‘You don’t have to go on stage, just read it from the score in the wings,’…

Throughout the summer, the Metropolitan Opera, New York will be presenting its Summer Encores of performances from its acclaimed Live in HD series in cinemas and theatres around the US and internationally. The 2022 Summer Encores series opens with Lehár’s The Merry Widow, starring sopranos Renée Fleming and Kelli O’Hara in director-choreographer Susan Stroman’s effervescent staging. The series also features Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, with soprano Patricia Racette in the title role in Anthony Minghella’s vivid production; Franco Zeffirelli’s classic staging of Puccini’s La bohème, with a cast led by soprano Sonya Yoncheva and tenor Michael Fabiano; and Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment featuring the vocal fireworks of soprano Natalie Dessay and tenor Juan Diego Flórez. www.metopera.org…

It may be a hotbed of the operatic fringe, but the Grimeborn Opera Festival has become something of a summer institution in London as it returns for its 15th year this July. The 2022 season features 14 operas, four new works and 11 female directors presenting a variety of traditional favourites and new tales from across the globe. The Festival opens on the 26 July with a special Gala Night at the Arcola Theatre before the opening of L’incoronazione di Poppea, a modern interpretation of Monteverdi’s opera from Ensemble OrQuesta. Following the acclaimed productions of Wagner’s Das Rheingold at Arcola Theatre in 2019 and Die Walküre last summer at London’s Hackney Empire, this year sees a double bill of Siegfried and Götterdämmerung on 6 and 7 August 2022, completing Grimeborn’s…

Few people think of Latin America as a hot bed of great operatic performances. It is a transplanted art form, making the long journey from Europe and, en route, becoming perhaps more rooted in the traditions of the past, less free to experiment and evolve. Latin America has tended to regard opera as a classical form that springs from the traditional European canon. More recently, however, that view has changed, with a new raft of young, innovative artistic directors taking the helm of the region’s theatres allowing innovation as the world emerges from the pandemic. But it is an ongoing challenge, as Argentine director Marcelo Lombardero informs me: ‘The situation in the opera houses of the region is very convoluted. Most opera houses are state-owned and run, therefore subject to…