Verdi's opera Luisa Miller remains a relative rarity on the operatic stage, and Midsummer Opera's performances of the work at St John's Church Waterloo on 23 & 25 March 2018 provide a welcome chance to experience the piece. David Roblou conducts a semi-staging with Stephen Holloway, John Upperton, Sian Woodling, Cheyney Kent, Andrew Major, and Emma Dogliani.
Luisa Miller was Verdi's 15th opera and is generally regarded as the first of his middle period operas, an important stepping stone which would lead to Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata. Prior to writing Luisa Miller for Naples, Verdi had spent a lot of time in Paris (his opera Jerusalem premiered there in 1847), and delays over agreements for the opera with Naples meant that Verdi had a longer time frame than usual for planning the piece and this results in greater influence from French opera in the work. Julian Budden comments that "the sensitive scoring, the flexibility of the musical forms, the growing importance of the role which Verdi assigned to the orchestra ... permits him to write two lengthy dialogue recitatives".
The libretto is based on the Friedrich Schiller play,Kabale und Liebe though the librettist Salvadore Cammarano transformed both the time period and the setting so that Schiller's aristocratic intrigues are moved to a Tyrolean village and the result is an exploration of bourgeois drama.
Full details from the Midsummer Opera website.
Tuesday 20 March 2018
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Popular Posts this month
-
Septura I first became aware of the brass septet, Septura , when noting their 2017/18 concert series Kleptomania at St John's Smith...
-
Mural: chamber music by Gabriel Vicéns; Stradivarius Reviewed 15 April 2024 At times fierce and concentrated, Gabriel Vicéns music can evok...
-
Britten: Death in Venice - Tim Mead, Leo Dixon - Royal Opera ((c) ROH 2019 photographed by Catherine Ashmore) 2019 seems to have b...
-
National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Jessica Cottis Catalyst : Coleridge-Taylor, Julius Eastman, Gavin Higgins, Dani Howard, Prokofiev...
-
Thomas Elwin as Lensky in Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin at West Green House Opera in 2021(Photo: Matthew Williams-Ellis) West Green House...
-
Gimnazija Kranj Symphony Orchestra I get all sorts of mail, people sending my information on concerts and recordings. Everything gets gl...
-
Bizet: Carmen, Act One - Blaise Malaba, Aighul Akhmetshina - Royal Opera House (Photo: ROH/Camilla Greenwell) Bizet: Carmen ; Aigul Akhmets...
-
Mozart: Don Giovanni - Hurn Court Opera (Photo: Patrick Frost, BlackStar Pictures) Mozart: Don Giovanni : Sam Young, Samuel Lom, Lizzie Ryde...
-
Leeds Lieder Young Artists 2024 at Howard Assembly Room Composers & Poets Forum Showcase: A Leeds Songbook; Leeds Lieder Festival at Le...
-
Victoria: Tenebrae Responsories ; I Fagiolini, Robert Hollingworth; CORO Reviewed 9 April 2024 Just one voice to a part, just intonation and...
No comments:
Post a Comment