Royal Opera s Homecoming Season 1999/2000 - - Features

Royal Opera s Homecoming Season 1999/2000
Date: 26 July 1999

The Royal Opera has been itinerant for two years while its Covent Garden home underwent a �214m renovation. Now, after controversies, near bankruptcy and an entire season cancelled, the company is going home and has announced an ambitious new programme to celebrate. Whatsonstage.com opera correspondent Keith McDonnell reports....

After two painful, turbulent years which almost resulted in its extinction, the Royal Opera has announced plans for its first season in the rebuilt Royal Opera House. There was a time when it was widely believed that there may not even be a Royal Opera left to perform in the house. It was forced to cancel touring performances for most of this year and, even once it's back ensconced at Covent Garden, it won't be running at full performing capacity in 1999-2000. Ah well, at least it's still intact and, judging by the line-up, feeling fighting fit.

Musical director Bernard Haitink, who earlier resigned and then rescinded his resignation, stays on until the end of the 2002 season. He more than any other person has kept morale going through the company's darkest hours, and he will be sorely missed. The good news is that 39-year-old maestro Antonio Pappano will be replacing him. With such a superbly gifted musical and theatrical director, the Royal Opera will stay in safe hands for at least the first part of the new millennium.

As for this season, it opens properly on the 6 December, with Haitink conducting Graham Vick's new production of Verdi's Falstaff. A truly world class cast is led by the incomparable Bryn Terfel in the title role, a role he sang for the first time for Opera Australia earlier this year to huge critical acclaim.

Of the other new productions dished up in this season, although many are firsts for Covent Garden, they have all been seen elsewhere, the first of which is Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre in Peter Sellars' Salzburg Festival staging. This could be a curious one as the staging was so uniformly panned by the critics in 1997 that it makes you wonder how it will appear in London. Another Salzburg import will be Karl and Ursel Hermann's staging of Mozart's opera seria La clemenza di Tito, conducted by Nicholas McGegan with Vinson Cole in the title role and the exciting young mezzo Vesselina Kasarova making her house debut in the role of Sesto.

There's also a new production of Otello - not Verdi's version but Rossini's, last performed here in 1871! Pier Luigi Pizzi recreates his Pesaro Festival staging so expect a lot of pillars and steps. It's a superb cast if you like that sort of thing, headed by Mariella Devia and Bruce Ford. And the final new production of the season will be Martinu's The Greek Passion. Opening at the Bregenz Festival later this month, it will be directed by David Pountney and conducted by Czech expert, Sir Charles Mackerras.

Plenty of ROH revivals will flesh out the repertory. These include: Birtwistle's brilliant opera Gawain (this will be its second revival - has any other house shown such loyalty to a commission than this?); Gounod's Romeo and Juliette with the hottest operatic couple of the day, Angela Gheorgiu and Roberto Alagna in the title roles (if they turn up); La boheme; a mouth wateringly cast Der Rosenkavalier with Renee Fleming, Susan Graham and Chrisitne Schafer conducted by Strauss expert Christian Thielemann; and Der Fliegende Hollander with Terfel singing his first Wagnerian role on stage as the Dutchman.

The season ends with Haitink conducting Vick's masterful production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg with the outstanding John Tomlinson as Hans Sachs and Thomas Allen as Beckmesser. I saw this production just before the closure of the old house, with the same singers, and at the time, counted it as one of the top five evenings I have ever spent at the opera. Sheer magic and not to be missed.

The Royal Opera could have played safe with wall to wall Toscas, Traviatas, Carmens and so on for their first, sure to be testing, season back at home. So hats off to the company for instead opting for such a varied and challenging season.

Keith McDonnell

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