March 2021
Our cover this month features Opera Australia’s return to the stage, with The Merry Widow at the Sydney Opera House. There’s something of an Antipodean theme in our new issue, since New Zealand Opera’s general director Thomas de Mallet Burgess talks to the Editor about his vision for opera in a corner of the world that has dealt better than most places with the pandemic and where performances look set to go ahead uninterrupted in 2021.
Closer to home, the director Sam Brown writes about making opera under lockdown — specifically his production of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen with students at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. But while we continue to address the effect of the worldwide crisis on the operatic industry, this is also a time in which people need opera as a form of escapism and we bring you a host of other stimulating features:
- Renowned harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani looks at J.S. Bach’s engagement with opera
- Great singers in great roles: Anne Evans on Brünnhilde
- Profile of the soprano Ailyn Pérez
- A very personal opera: Delius’s Fennimore and Gerda
- An extra aria from Rigoletto resurfaces in New Orleans
- Career navigation: the second in our series in which singers discuss steps on the ladder
- For the record, with James Newby
We review live performances wherever they have been happening and cover new recordings and books. Our Disc of the Month is Salieri’s Armida, conducted by Christophe Rousset on the Aparté label. ‘If you want to know why the portrayal of Salieri in Amadeus as a talentless pedant is slander’ … have a listen!
Available online February 09, in-store February 16
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