On May 20, I went to see three new ballet pieces at the Palais Garnier here in Paris, Leon, Lightfoot / Van Manen. The first one, Sleight of hand choreographed by Paul Lightfoot and Sol León to Philip Glass’ Symphonie # 2, was, in my opinion, nothing short of incredible. It felt like a ballet version of the 2006 movie The fountain (except that I did not fall asleep this time).
La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi
1 CommentSince my decision to focus on the comic operas is rather recent, whereas my habit of booking tickets months in advance is not, I still have a number of, shall we say, not so light operas to review. One such example is Verdi's La Traviata that I attended in (at?) Bastille on December 11, 2018. I will try hard not to spoil the plot for those who do not know it, but let us just say that it fits well into your regular operatic storyline. You know, the one with a foreseeable yet dramatic death at the end (oops, sorry!)
La Cenerentola by Gioacchino Rossini
1 CommentA mere week after attending the french ballet Cendrillon at Bastille, I went back to Garnier for the Italian opera La Cenerentola. Come to think about it, Cinderella’s story does not technically have anything to do with either Christmas or New Years, does it? Yet, I don’t know how you, the reader, feel about Christmas, but my inner Russian stubbornly maintains the belief in New Year miracles (my inner physicist, on the other hand, can’t help a smirk). So yes, where there is New Years, there are miracles, and that includes Cinderella.
Cendrillon by Rudolf Noureev
CommentOne of the vinyls I used to listen to as a small kid living on a naval base in the Far East of Russia was Cinderella, an audio fairy-tale set to music excerpts from Prokofiev’s 1940s ballet. I wonder what I would have thought if someone told me back then that the next time I would hear those tunes would be in a Parisian opera house :)
L'elisir d'amore by Gaetano Donizetti
CommentThis past Monday I went to see L'elisir d'amore, a comic opera in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti, at Opera Bastille here in Paris. I have already seen (and thoroughly enjoyed!) his Don Pasquale earlier this year, so I had a good feeling as I got off work and squeezed myself and a strategically packed salmon sandwich into the subway.