ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA’S new production of Benjamin Britten’s opera BILLY BUDD opens on 18 June at the London Coliseum. From the award-winning team behind ENO’s Peter Grimes this production reunites director David Alden and conductor Edward Gardner for the first time since 2009.
Benedict Nelson as Billy Budd (left).
© Laurie Lewis/Lebrecht Music & Arts
Benedict Nelson as Billy Budd (top) and Gwynne Howell as Dansker.
© Laurie Lewis/Lebrecht Music & Arts
Lebrecht Music & Arts has received preview images of ENO’s new production of The Death of Klinghoffer, which opens tomorrow evening at The Coliseum. Search online at www.lebrecht.co.uk for more images of the production and the work’s composer, John Adams.
Lebrecht Music & Arts brings you preview images of Mikhail Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila, premiering at the revamped Bolshoi Theatre tonight.
Nudity, video, puppets and an ultra-modern twist on Glinka’s folkloric romantic opera will be the first full production to grace the stage of Russia’s newly renovated theatre. When the first public audience sits down on Wednesday, the Bolshoi’s curtains — with the name Russia scrawled across them in crimson and gold — will part to reveal an elaborate pastel blue set reminiscent of traditional Russian Easter eggs. Large electronic screens will vie for the audience’s attention with actors in full period costume, while acrobats, jugglers and naked women dash across the stage.
It is by far the most modern take on the opera to take place on the Bolshoi’s historic stage, where it has been performed more than 700 times in nine different versions over the past 165 years.
Search for more images online at www.lebrecht.co.uk.
Search online at www.lebrecht.co.uk for a full selection of images
Lebrecht now has rarely seen photos of Polish Jewish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg. His opera, The Passenger, will have its UK premiere on Monday 19th September at ENO in London.
The Passenger is based upon a semi-autobiographical novel by Auschwitz survivor Zofia Posmysz. It tells the story of an encounter between two women – one a former Auschwitz guard, the other a former prisoner – which plunges them both back into the horrors of the Holocaust, pitting perpetrator against victim in a moral battle between guilt and denial, retribution and absolution. The work was originally banned in the USSR because of its references to the Holocaust. The Passenger debuted at last year’s Bregenz Festival. Visit www.lebrecht.co.uk for a full range of images.
