Gleanings from Opera Magazine

I love Opera Magazine's We hear that... column. I'm too lazy to go crawling the interweb for rumours of castings and perfectly happy to wait for Opera Magazine to arrive to find out what they have gleaned.  Tenor Will Hartmann will be playing the Shepherd in Kasper Holten's new production of King Roger in 2014/15 with Mariusz Kwiecien in the title role. After having heard the piece in Santa Fe, I simply don't want to have to wait.


Covent Garden will be presenting a new Cav and Pag (hurrah!) in 2013/14 with Pappano conducting and Latvian sensation Aleksandrs Antonenko as Canio. Still in the UK, Opera North are doing a new Fanciulla del West in January 2014 with Robert Hayward as Jack Rance.

Over in Milan, Aleksandra Kurzak will be joining Juan Diego Florez in Comte Orly in summer 2014, her debut in the role of Adele. Worth travelling to Milan for certainly.

Andre Tchaikowsky, the Polish composer (1935 - 1982) whose skull is used as a prop by the Royal Shakespeare Company (I kid you not!), will have his opera The Merchant of Venice premiered at the Bregenz Festival in 2013.

And in Florence next summer, Graham Vick is to direct a new production of the original 1847 version of Verdi's Macbeth at the Teatro della Pergola, where it was premiered. I have always loved this version, and found the ROH's semi-staged version with Anthony Michaels Moore in 1999/2000 extremely powerful. Now, can we manage to fit in a trip to Florence next year?