June Card News
American soprano and stage director
- soprano
- United States of America
- opera singer
Last update
2024-04-25
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2024-04-06 11:15:00
Bizet's Carmen at Covent Garden: gritty realism & a reluctance to add any local colour & movement, redeemed by musical performances
Bizet: Carmen, Act One - Blaise Malaba, Aighul Akhmetshina - Royal Opera House (Photo: ROH/Camilla Greenwell)Bizet: Carmen; Aigul Akhmetshina, Piortr Beczala, Olga Kulchynska, Kostas Smoriginas, director: Damiano Michieletto, conductor: Antonello Manacorda; Royal OperaReviewed 5 April 2024The new production pairs finely musical performances with a sense of gritty realism and a reluctance to add any local colour and movement.For all its iconic status and abundance of good tunes, Bizet's Carmen remains something of a challenge for large opera companies. Until relatively recently matters of edition and style were unquestioning, the grand opera version with Ernest Guiraud's recitatives and a setting that was 'traditional 19th-century Spain'. Since then, things have got more complex with a return to using the opera comique version and a wish to avoid the lazy stage-Spanish stereo-types. It is worth emphasising that the Bizet's opera has little Spanish input, composer, librettists and original author were all French men. And whilst […]
The Boston Musical Intelligencer
2024-02-27 22:55:11
[…] usually teach at nearby colleges and have other performance gigs. These orchestras are constantly innovating, seeing what sticks, and are often unable to secure A-list soloists. The Baltimore Symphony has a lauded after-school initiative, which as of 2018 had over 1300 students; Kentucky’s Louisville Symphony is committed to performing in free outdoor venues and commissioning new music. The BSO still has discounted tickets; I am a BSO subscriber through one of its access programs, a College Card that is $30 a year for unlimited concerts. But the BSO, like many of The Big Five, sees its work as prestigious and international. It sees itself as the upright beacon of the tradition, not the watered-down introduction to it. *** Boston’s 2,625-seat symphony hall was packed at the first concert I attended: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. The widely believed reports that a riot broke out at the first performance may well be urban […]
2023-11-09 23:53:00
Veterans Building, with Herbst Theater, in the distance; War Memorial Opera House, foregroundVintage post Card, collection of Lisa HirschSan Francisco Performance sent out a press release this afternoon with postponements of two upcoming concerts:Stephen Hough: was November 14, 20223, 7:30 pm; new date TBACastalian String Quartet: was November 15, 2023, 7:30 pm; new date TBABoth concerts were at Herbst Theater. "Travel difficulties" is the reason for both postponements.I was going to get a ticket to see the Castalian; they played a tremendous concert earlier this year at Cal Performances (Haydn, Saariaho, Schubert) and I was very much looking forward to the planned SFP program (Janacek, Beethoven, Turnage). Ah, well; later in the season, I hope.
2023-10-27 10:42:00
Carmen, Deutsche Oper, 26 October 2023
Carmen – Aigul Akhmetshina Don José – David Butt Philip Micaëla – Maria Motolygina Escamillo – Byung Gil Kim Zuniga – Christian Simmons Moralès – Dean Murphy Frasquita – Meechot Marrero Mercédès – Arianna Manganello Dancaïro – Artur Garbas Remendado – Kieran Carrel Lillas Pastia – Dean Street Mercédès’s daughter – Fatima HammadOle Anders Tandberg (directo)Erlend Birkeland (set designs)Maria Geber (costumes)Ellen Ruge (lighting)Silke Sense (choreography)Children’s Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (chorus director: Christian Lindhorst)Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (chorus director: Jeremy Bines) Orchestra of the Deutsche OperBen Glassberg (conductor)Images from 2018 original production with different cast: © Marcus LieberenzHmmm. I think I could see, some of the time, what Ole Anders Tandberg was trying to do in his 2018 Deutsche Oper production of Carmen. There were some reasonable ideas, some less so, and some that were frankly terrible. Next to Dmitri Tcherniakov’s brilliant reimagining of the work for Aix the previous year, […]
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