Concerts and Dance Tuned to the Season: Global Arts Guide
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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/arts/global-arts-guide-2017-concerts-and-dance.html Version 0 of 1. A look at festivals, opera and orchestral and dance performances taking place across the world this winter. SALZBURG, AUSTRIA Mozartwoche, mozarteum.at Jan. 26 to Feb. 5 Chamber concerts, solo recitals and full-fledged orchestra performances are included in this Mozart Week festival, timed to coincide with Mozart’s birthday (the composer, a Salzburg native, would be 261 in January). The broad array of events in the weeklong lineup also includes nontraditional offerings, like a round table on Mozart and Haydn with music experts, and a staging of Mozart’s “Requiem” featuring live music and a French equestrian academy performing choreography with horses. SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA Great Opera Hits, opera.org.au Dec. 26 to March 26 When it is winter in the Northern Hemisphere, Opera Australia goes on summer break, staging extracts from the world’s best operas on a stage overlooking the city’s iconic harbor. Up-and-coming stars from the company will sing some of the best known arias through March. This year’s performances, accompanied on piano, include extracts from works like “Carmen,” “La Traviata” and “La Bohème.” VARIOUS CITIES St. Jerome’s Laneway Festival, lanewayfestival.com Jan. 21 to Feb. 5 This itinerant pop music festival is actually a series of one-off daylong festivals in cities like Singapore and Sydney, Australia. Major dance, pop and house acts, largely from Britain and Australia, are playing this year. They include Gang of Youths, Glass Animals, Clams Casino and Floating Points. The acts vary in each of the festival’s seven locations, with rising local musicians appearing with heavy hitters on each stop. AMSTERDAM Dutch National Opera & Ballet, operaballet.nl The Russian composer (and professional research chemist) Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin died in 1887 at age 53, before ever completing his opera, “Prince Igor.” So Dmitri Tcherniakov reworked it for his 2014 production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, rearranging the plot and adding new music. The production is having its Dutch premiere with the National Opera in February. The National Ballet’s season includes “Made in Amsterdam,” a mixed series of works made for the company by choreographic stars like Hans van Manen, Alexei Ratmansky and Christopher Wheeldon. BERLIN Deutsche Oper, deutscheoperberlin.de The opera’s winter season mixes classic takes on the opera canon (like a loyal rendering of Puccini’s “La Bohème”) with some more cutting-edge productions like a pared down, modernist performance of Mozart’s “Magic Flute.” There’s dance in the lineup, too, and some nontraditional works. Opera Lounge, a late-night evening of performance on Jan. 19, for example, mixes extracts from classic Russian operas sung by opera ensemble members, with D.J. sessions. LONDON Royal Opera House, roh.org.uk Francesco Cilea’s “Adriana Lecouvreur,” about a glamorous 18th-century French actress who died under mysterious circumstances, was warmly received when it had its premiere in Milan in 1902, but since then it has drifted into relative obscurity. The director David McVicar’s opulent production of the opera is showing at the Opera House in February, conducted by Daniel Oren. The ballet season includes a mix of mainstays, like “The Sleeping Beauty,” and new pieces, like “Woolf Works,” a trio of short ballets by Wayne McGregor, inspired by Virginia Woolf. MADRID Teatro Real, teatro-real.com Benjamin Britten’s 1951 opera “Billy Budd,” based on Herman Melville’s novella of the same name, follows a group of soldiers aboard a British ship as they battle the French Navy. Below its blustering military surface, the opera explores dark themes like vendettas and subterfuged desire. The avant-garde British stage director Deborah Warner will direct a new production of the opera, which will run through February. Jacques Imbrailo will play the young sailor Billy; Brindley Sherratt will play the ship’s master-at-arms, Claggart, who loathes him for reasons that Claggart cannot understand. ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA Mariinsky, mariinsky.ru A dreamlike semistaged version of Verdi’s “Requiem,” featuring masked performers, a giant liturgical incense bottle that swings from the ceiling, and a cast member who floats above the stage will appear in late January. The renowned conductor Valery Gergiev will conduct the show. The rest of the winter season features a lively mix of popular operas, like Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” and lesser-known pieces, like Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Tale of Tsar Saltan,” which was inspired by a Pushkin poem. (The opera is best known for its popular theme, “Flight of the Bumblebee.”) MOSCOW Bolshoi, bolshoi.ru The stage director Evgeny Pisarev’s buoyant, bright-hued staging of Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro,” which had its premiere in Moscow in 2015, returns in January for several performances. The return is part of a busy lineup of opera classics gracing the Moscow stage this season. Others include Dmitri Tcherniakov’s austere rendering of “Eugene Onegin,” Francesca Zambello’s take on the tragic “La Traviata” and Tchaikovsky’s final opera, “Iolanta,” staged by Sergey Zhenovach. MILAN Teatro Alla Scala, teatroallascala.org Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” drew jeers when it had its premiere in Milan in 1904. The original version of the opera is getting its first production at the opera house since then, conducted by the company’s new chief conductor, Riccardo Chailly. The Latvian director Alvis Hermanis directed the production, with striking visuals that were inspired by Kabuki theater styles and Japanese painting. Other operas coming this winter include Damiano Michieletto’s lush staging of Verdi’s “Falstaff,” and a classic “Don Carlo,” directed by the German eminence Peter Stein. TOKYO New National Theater, nntt.jac.go.jp “Carmen,” “Madama Butterfly,” “Otello” and “Lucia di Lammermoor” are among the opera hits scheduled for Tokyo’s leading opera stage this year (Donizetti’s “Lucia” will be a new production, directed by Jean-Louis Grinda). Ballets in the interdisciplinary company’s lineup include a Christmas “Cinderella” (a holiday alternative to “The Nutcracker” in some countries); and Delibes’s “Coppélia,” about a man who falls in love with a lifelike doll. In February, the theater will stage a “Valentine’s Ballet,” with short, romantic dances by famed choreographers, including George Balanchine and Marius Petipa. PARIS Paris Opera Ballet, operadeparis.fr Mozart’s “Così Fan Tutte,” about two men who accept a bet that their lovers will not cheat on them when left to their own devices, has ruffled feathers since its 1790 premiere, but perhaps never more than in the last year. A production that opened at a summer festival in Aix-en-Provence, France, moved the opera to Africa, and recast the story as an exploration of white brutality (it also featured blackface). Another unusual production of the opera is premiering: A version by the choreographer Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker begins in January. Other operas in the company’s winter repertoire include “Carmen,” “Lohengrin” and “The Magic Flute.” TEL AVIV The Israeli Opera, israel-opera.co.il “Lucia di Lammermoor” — an update of Walter Scott’s 1819 novel “The Bride of Lammermoor” — tracks the tragic story of Lucia, who falls in love with her brother’s enemy, and loses her mind when her brother falsely convinces her that her beloved has betrayed her. The Spanish director Emilio Sagi’s minimalist production foregrounds the characters’ emotional life. It runs in January. In March, the company will stage a stark and stylish “Faust,” inspired by Goethe’s epic about a scholar who makes a pact with the Devil. BERLIN Berlin Philharmonic, berliner-philharmoniker.de Herbert Blomstedt, Riccardo Chailly and Simon Rattle, the orchestra’s outgoing lead conductor, will lead concerts this winter, anchoring the celebrated orchestra’s season with performances of music by well-loved musicians like Verdi, Rachmaninoff and Brahms. On March 22, the company’s incoming chief conductor, Kirill Petrenko, will take to the Philharmonie stage to lead concerts with music by Mozart, John Adams and Tchaikovsky. LONDON London Symphony Orchestra, lso.co.uk Simon Rattle, who starts his tenure with the orchestra next autumn, will come to London to play semistaged performances of Ligeti’s “Le Grand Macabre,” directed by the iconoclastic stage director Peter Sellars, who is perhaps best known for his 1988 production of “Le Nozze di Figaro” in Trump Tower. The orchestra has a generally starry winter lineup in the works. In February, it will host an evening of Wagner excerpts, conducted by Antonio Pappano, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2, conducted by Daniel Harding. HONG KONG Hong Kong Philharmonic, hkphil.org On Dec. 30 and 31, the Philharmonic will ring in the new year with two festive concerts featuring lively music by Richard Strauss, Ravel and Johann Strauss II. Later, the orchestra will turn its attention toward classical heavy hitters like Wagner (whose “Siegfried,” will get a rendition on Jan. 19 and 22) and Beethoven (whose “Emperor” Concerto is being staged on two dates this spring, conducted by the up-and-comer Elim Chan). SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, seoulphil.or.kr Stravinsky wrote his “Funeral Song” to mark the death of his teacher and mentor, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1908. The work was performed once in 1909, but was lost until this year, when a librarian discovered it at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. The piece will have its Asian premiere — and just its third performance — in Seoul in January (the second performance was in Russia earlier this month). The conductor Markus Stenz will lead it as part of an evening of work dedicated to “Romantic Revolutionaries,” including Stravinsky, Liszt and Schumann (Jan. 20 and 21). TOKYO Tokyo Philharmonic, tpo.or.jp The orchestra starts 2017 with two concerts of music by Strauss, Chopin and Bolero, led by the celebrated conductor Tadaaki Otaka. Other concerts in the company’s winter season include a performance of work by the Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla, Brahms and Wagner, conducted by Yutaka Sado on Jan. 26, and in February an evening of music by Stravinsky and Prokofiev led by the Russian conductor Mikhail Pletnev. |