Opera diary

I see from this month's Opera Magazine that Opera North will be giving complete cycles of their semi-staged Ring cycle in 2015, including one at the Festival Hall in London. Still in London, Renee Fleming will be giving her Covent Garden farewell performances in a new production of Der Rosenkavalier in 2016-17. The most curious thing is that the director is given as Christoph Waltz, the Austrian actor best known for his film roles (Inglourious Bastards), though it seems that Waltz did study singing.  Over in NY, the new Met Der Rosenkavalier in 2016-17 will be directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov with Eva-Maria Westbroek; now that will be interesting.


Perhaps almost as tempting, next year Soile Isokoski will be singing Ariadne at Glyndebourne. And in 2013-14 Jonathan Kent is directing a new Manon Lescaut at Covent Garden with Kristin Opolais and Jonas Kaufmann. (The last time Covent Garden attempted a major new production of this opera in 1983, Piero Faggioni's planned set caused problems and the director/designer walked out leaving the opera house with a Royal Gala with Placido Domingo and Kiri te Kanawa and no production).


During next season, Donald Runnicles will be conducting concert performances of the three acts of Tristan and Isolde split over three concerts with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra in Glasgow and in Edinburgh. This is something that Runnicles did a while back with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Then it had Christine Brewer as Isolde, this time Runnicles has Nina Stemme, along with Ian Storey and Peter Rose. Further details from the orchestra's website.