De Falla : La vida breve & Puccini : Gianni Schicchi / Opera North, 18th February 2015

A decade or so ago Opera North staged their groundbreaking “Eight Little Greats” season of operatic “shorts”. The operas were “mixed and matched” so that audiences could put together their own combination of Double Bill. The project was hailed as a revolution in opera going. As an artistic concept, the Eight Little Greats created some of the most exhilarating evenings that I can recall in well over three decades of attending Opera North performances. The complexities of a three-year planning cycle for this astonishing festival of short self-contained operas no doubt lie behind the reasons why the venture has sadly never been repeated. Christopher Alden‘s visceral production of De Falla’s disturbing two-act “mini” opera La vida breve was paired back in 2004 with either Puccini’s Il tabarro or Zemlinsky’s The Dwarf – all three of them unremittingly dark pieces. I remember Germaine Greer enthusing on BBC2’s Newsnight review at the time: “If you give a damn, then see La vida breve. It’s a staggering work and it is staggeringly presented and performed”.

Verdi : La traviata / Opera North, 20th September 2014

The decadence and glamour of Paris at the turn of the 19th Century is depicted in Alessandro Talevi‘s spiced-up new production of Verdi’s classic tear jerker. I say “spiced-up” because the atmosphere of Violetta’s Act l party scene is more redolent of an orgy in a bordello than the usual deceptively elegant and mannered gathering I have encountered in some productions. Guests in various states of dis-arranged dress (the young men are bare chested apart from scant waistcoats) can be seen in different coital positions moving to the rhythm of the music during Violetta’s celebrated showpiece “Sempre libera”. The audience is left in little doubt by the end of the act as to the nature of Violetta’s calling as a courtesan  – or upmarket prostitute – call her what you will.