We now need to get our bookings in for next year’s opera season at Grange Park. The programme is excellent. There are two alternatives:
Janacek - Katya Kabanova Thursday 27th June or
Double bill - Rachmaninoff - Aleko and Puccini - Gianni Schicchi Wednesday 26th June
These are two very different evenings and my preference is for the Janacek. Katya is one of the great operas of the world and Probus has not yet been to a Janacek opera. This is likely to be one of the must see country house operas next year. Details are as follows:
Katya Kabanova is one of the 20th century’s greatest operas. Janáček wrote music of blazing intensity inspired by his own love for a young woman. A second inspiration was Puccini’s Madama Butterfly which, he says, was the impetus musically and dramatically.
Director David Alden (ROH, the Met, Munich, Vienna) creates the claustrophobic village for acclaimed soprano, Natalya Romaniw, in the title role. Trapped in a loveless marriage, she is driven to despair by the Kabanov clan led by her vile mother-in-law, Kabanicha. This epic character is none other than Susan Bullock.
Janáček’s score brims with vocal and orchestral writing of extreme beauty. “Katya”, he wrote, “is one of my most tender works”.
The double bill is:
Aleko is Rachmaninoff at his most effusive, in an exquisite score brimming with his trademark soaring melodies.
Sir Bryn Terfel is Pushkin’s Romantic hero, a tormented victim of passion with a knife at the ready for any wrong-doing. He has turned his back on the ordinary world to be with Zemfira who breaks him. The blood-drenched show-down presents a side of Bryn that is rarely – if ever – seen. Bizet’s Carmen, written two decades before, was drawn from this same Pushkin verse story.
And
In marked contrast, Bryn is Puccini’s comic trickster Gianni Schicchi (pronounced Junny Skikki), called in by the wealthy Donatis to solve a family problem. He refuses – until his daughter sings Puccini’s most famous aria O mio babbino caro.
This comic masterpiece (Puccini’s only comedy and written towards the end of his life) is built on every family’s nightmare: the reading of a will that goes disastrously wrong.
If you’ve never laughed out loud at an opera, try this!
Please let me know by Friday 20th October whether you would like to go to a) either or b) Janacek or c) the double bill
Our usual seats are priced at £190 for Janacek and £210 for the double bill per person. I will not need paying immediately but by responding it is taken as a commitment. The additional costs for those who haven’t been before are marquee hire, cutlery and crockery, bottled water and coffee plus bubbles and nibbles before the performance about £20 per head and a picnic, either from at home £30 - £45 or you can choose self-catering.