You don't need to buy into the loose hell-purgatory-paradise trajectory of Puccini's one-act operas to greet the triptych as his comprehensive masterpiece, full of wry interconnections, orchestral wizardry and grateful if tough vocal writing.
The Swiss-born Sicilian tenor has died, far too young at the age of 43, 10 days after an accident on his Vespa. He was one of the best and most stylish of his rare breed, even if the scrummage to find an heir to Pavarotti sometimes pushed him into a corner. I'll not forget his Alvaro in Verdi's La forza del Destino at Covent Garden: here after so long was another true Italian tenor with a golden middle range who could at least act with his voice.
It may have taken her until 2005 to get her Wigmore Hall debut, until 2006 to break onto the stage of the Royal Opera House, but at 53 Susan Bullock has finally arrived, claiming the crown of soloist for this year’s Last Night of the Proms, a firm foothold at Covent Garden and her rightful place as Britain’s finest dramatic soprano. For a singer who “started singing by mistake”, whose musical training began in a council house in Cheshire on a piano rescued from the local rubbish dump, it’s no small achievement.
Vignette Productions is a bit of a one-off in the operatic world. It was established three years ago by the rising young British tenor Andrew Staples, his mission to create operas that were more exciting and told better stories than those generally on offer. Staples directs rather than sings; his casts are made up of young unknown singers, and the productions to date certainly fulfil the original aim. Last year, their summer production of Cosi fan tutte had the audience sitting in deckchairs atop of six tons of sand and ended with a beach party. With that in mind, a bit of youthful wackiness was absolutely to be expected, nay joyfully anticipated, from La bohème this week. Wacky it was too, and in a very good way.
With opera houses in Britain now ringing to the four-letter cries of Anna Nicole and Two Boys (not to mention the rather more elderly, but no less explicit utterances of Le grand macabre) verbal taboos it seems are a thing of the past. Yet one word remains tainted, perpetually and immutably filthy, never to be voiced in polite cultural company: operetta. Whether or not Puccini’s La rondine actually falls into this genre is debatable, but like the heroine at its heart we shouldn’t allow this silken embrace of a work to be tarnished by a label, however obscene.
Tosca-at-Covent-Garden is a commodity, like bacon-for-breakfast - a pricier commodity, to be true, at officially up to £229.50 a seat, but in both cases people want to get what they expect. For the final performances next month in this summer revival, with the megastars Angela Gheorghiu, Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel, all seats are sold, with touts on eBay offering a pair of amphitheatre seats at bids over £300.
No point in going to WNO’s Turandot expecting to see images of old Beijing, for all the charming lady in a Chinese floral hat on the programme cover. The curtain goes up on the inside of an enormous galvanised dustbin festooned with photos of what might be lads from the football team but are actually Turandot’s victims to date. Calaf is a vagrant, Turandot a blue-suited Rosa Klebb, Ping, Pang and Pong fascisti bureaucrats in coloured suits, the “Popolo di Pekino” (both sexes) shirted and tied office workers, and so forth. Perfumes of the East? Forget it.
Be different - take a festival break in Europe instead of the UK, and catch a different landscape. While artists in both new music and classical are constantly circling the world in search of more picturesque settings, you can find your alternative Glasto in Denmark or Belgium, or you can find favourite chamber musicians in Austria rather than London. theartsdesk brings you listings of this year's major European festivals: rock in Sonar, Sziget and Stradbally, opera in Bayreuth, Verona and Salzburg, dance in Vienna, Epidauros and Spoleto, visual arts in Istanbul, Zurich and Avignon. This is the indispensable clickable guide to a cultured break in Europe.
Contemporary music and 11 new productions are at the heart of a strong ENO 2011-12 season announced today.