James Bonas News
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2019-06-28 15:43:49
* Notes * Last night's opening of L'enfant et les sortilèges at San Francisco Symphony shimmered and shone. James Bonas' semi-staged production (Anna Christie and Isabel Leonard pictured, photograph by Jean Pierre Maurin) made use of quirky animated projections. The...
2019-06-08 05:36:00
Classical Music News of the Week, June 8, 2019
[…] the English National Opera, Brabbins has previously conducted Ravel's enchanting opera at the Opéra de Lyon in France in 2012, at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich in 2013, and again in Lyon in 2016—premiering a new production, which will be featured at the San Francisco Symphony's performances in June. Originally commissioned by Opéra de Lyon in association with L'Auditori de Barcelona and Maestro Arts, the production was conceived by Animator Grégoire Pont and Director James Bonas. For further information, visit SFSymphony.org. --San Francisco Symphony PRJohn Corigliano's Symphony No. 1 The Chelsea Symphony's (TCS) final concerts of their 2018/2019 season, on June 29 & 30, feature John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1, and the winner of its 5th annual composition competition, Aaron Israel Levin's In Between. John Corigliano's Symphony No. 1 was written in the late 1980s as the AIDS pandemic was claiming the lives of many. The first of Corigliano's large-format […]
2019-06-04 18:08:00
Yikes: MTT Taking Medical Leave
[…] Pärt’s Fratres for Strings and Percussion and Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances. Gersen made his SFS debut in 2013 and has led the Orchestra multiple times in both Davies Symphony Hall and in experimental SoundBox programs. June 27, 29, and 30: British conductor Martyn Brabbins will conduct the SFS in a semi-staged production of Ravel’s L'Enfant et les sortilèges June 27, 29, and 30, featuring mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard as L’Enfant. Created by the visionary team of animator Grégoire Pont and director James Bonas, the staging uses advanced projection techniques to capture the fantasy and poetry of Ravel’s spellbinding and luminous tale. Brabbins premiered this dazzling and popular production at the Opéra de Lyon in 2012, reviving it in 2013 at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, and again in Lyon in 2016. First half repertoire now also includes Debussy’s Children’s Corner, La Plus que lente, Noël des enfants qui n'ont plus de maison and Ravel’s The Enchanted Garden fromMa Mère l'Oye (Mother Goose). […]
2015-10-12 12:35:35
Britten theatre, LondonEnglish Touring Opera’s reinvention of the work in terms of German early cinema suits it well, even if not all the ideas come off. Sam Furness is terrific in the title roleJames Bonas’s English Touring Opera production of The Tales of Hoffmann reinvents Offenbach’s final masterpiece in terms of German expressionist cinema of the 1920s. The conceit suits the piece remarkably well. The historical ETA Hoffmann, on whose morbidly surreal short stories the work is based, is widely regarded as an expressionist precursor, while the opera’s sense of beauty under threat from the macabre resonates through the imagery of German film in the wake of the first world war: the film theorist Siegfried Kracauer, the leading authority on the cinema of the period, was also, significantly, Offenbach’s principal German biographer. Continue reading...