The Royal Opera’s 2011/12 season has been inspired by the image of the Olympic rings says the company’s Music Director Antonio Pappano, as it will feature a number of cycles.
In a reversal of the Royal Opera’s usual policy of easing into the season with revivals before presenting new work, the 2011/12 season opens with a bang, premiering Puccini’s triptych of one-act operas Il Trittico, directed by Richard Jones. Though one of the pieces, the comedy Gianni Schicchi, is a revival of Jones’s 2007 production, dark thriller Il Tabarro and convent-based tale of tragedy and redemption Suor Angelica, are new. To give each piece a distinctive feel, three different designers – John MacFarlane, Ultz and Miriam Buether – will be used.
The cyclical theme is continued later in the season with a revival of the Mozart/Da Ponte comedies Don Gionvanni, Così Fan Tutte and Le Nozze Di Figaro, while, looking ahead to the autumn of 2012, Wagner’s Ring Cycle is to return to Covent Garden.
Other new productions for the 2011/12 season include Dvořák’s tragic fairytale Rusalka, given a full staging for the first time at the Royal Opera House, the UK premiere of Judith Weir’s Miss Fortune, the first complete performances of Berlioz’s Les Troyens at the Royal Opera House since 1972, and a Robert Carsen-directed production of Falstaff, marking the first time the Canadian director has originated a piece at Covent Garden.
The season also features a feast of revivals, with Der Fliegende Holländer, Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg, Otello, Faust, La Sonnambula, Rigoletto, La Fille Du Régiment, La Bohème, Salome and a production of La Traviata boasting three different casts all promising entertaining evenings of opera.
At a press conference to launch the season yesterday, Pappano talked of creating a family of singers at the Royal Opera. The season includes performances from Eva-Maria Westbroek, who made such an impression in Anna Nicole, Simon Keenlyside, Anja Kampe, Toby Spence, John Tomlinson, Angela Gheorghiu and Olivier Award-nominee Jonas Kaufmann, while Placido Domingo returns for a special performance to close the season.
ROH2, the Royal Opera House’s contemporary arm, also has an intriguing 2011/12 planned, including an operatic interpretation of Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness, a piece inspired by Bonnie Greer’s appearance opposite BNP leader Nick Griffin on Question Time, the return of The Opera Group’s The Lion’s Face, and pieces by The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon, American singer-songwriter Scott Walker and British composer Graham Fitkin as part of OperaShots.
The Royal Opera is once again committing to giving its work a wider audience by screening both Otello and the Domingo Celebration as part of its successful BP Summer Big Screens.
MA