Mireille Alcantara News
French singer
- soprano
- opera singer, voice teacher
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2024-04-24
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2022-03-10 08:30:56
Anglais - Oliver Mears’s Rigoletto Finds its Stride at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Some productions are tremendous on their first outing and never quite manage to recapture the same brilliance in subsequent revivals. Others discover that they need an initial outing before they find their feet, and the Royal Opera’s Rigoletto, from its Director of Opera Oliver Mears, would seem to fall into this latter category. It first appeared last September, but, aided by an outstanding cast, its first revival feels leaner and meaner in a great many ways. The good news is that once such productions hit their stride they tend to retain what they have achieved, meaning we have many good revivals to look forward to yet. Based on Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse, Giuseppe Verdi’s 1851 opera does not possess the same moral dimension as the majority of operas. While many works see the innocent suffer and die, there is usually a sense in which virtue has triumphed if only […]
2022-01-13 20:40:04
Anglais - A Fresh Feeling Revival of David McVicar’s The Marriage of Figaro at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
The Marriage of Figaro of 1786 is one of three operas on which Mozart collaborated with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (the others being Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte). It is based on the second of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ trilogy of Figaro plays, while the first was later to be immortalised by Rossini in The Barber of Seville. It centres on the day on which Figaro, valet to Count Almaviva, tries to wed Susanna, maid to the Countess. The womanising Count is intending to restore the droit du seigneur, an abolished feudal law that allows a lord to enjoy any female servant first on her wedding night, because he craves Susanna. Figaro and Susanna thus set out to outwit him as a youth named Cherubino causes havoc with his own promiscuous ways, the Countess feels completely unloved and neglected by the Count, and an ageing woman named Marcellina insists that Figaro marry her unless he can pay off his debt. It does […]
2020-08-24 09:07:15
A Life On-Line: Paul Mealor's Piano Concerto, Zandonai in New York, Turandot in Zagreb
Puccini: Turandot - Renzo Zulian (Calaf) - Croatian National Opera, Zagreb Last Saturday (15 August 2020), JAM on the Marsh featured the premiere of Paul Mealor's Piano Concerto which was performed (without an audience) by pianist John Frederick Hudson (for whom the work was written), the London Mozart Players and conductor Michael Bawtree [see my recent interview with Paul for more background on the work]. The final concert in JAM's on-line festival. Mealor's concerto, written for solo piano, strings and percussion, was performed in the context of a programme of music for strings, with The Seafarer by Peter Aviss, The Hythe by Judith Bingham (which JAM commissioned in 2012), Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings and Bartok's Romanian Folk Dances.Mealor's concerto was deliberately written as a musical description of Romney Marsh and Mealor has described how he wrote the piece partly whilst staying on the Marsh, and the programme […]
2019-12-22 18:21:47
Anglais - Slow Pace but Strong Performances in La traviata at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata of 1853 is one of the most frequently performed operas in the world today. Based on Alexandre Dumas, fils’s play La Dame aux camélias, it tells of Violetta Valéry who is a famed Parisian courtesan. Beneath her apparently carefree exterior, however, she is suffering from tuberculosis and her world is shaken when she meets Alfredo with whom she falls in love. They run away together and live off the sale of her goods, but one day Alfredo’s father Giorgio Germont appears and begs her to leave him. This is because Alfredo’s behaviour has brought disgrace on his family, which is impacting on the ability of Germont’s daughter to marry and be happy. Despite loving Alfredo deeply, Violetta shows compassion towards the family and agrees. Alfredo, however, does not discover the real reason why Violetta has suddenly walked away, and everything comes to a head when […]
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