Peter Gelb says the Ring will definitely not return, as originally planned, in 2017, and where has La Cieca heard that before? [New York Times]

Peter BrathwaiteIf that model in the Dockers ad looks familiar, it might be because you've seen him on a London opera stage, on the cover an Amore CD or even in the Barihunks calendar. Peter Brathwaite was chosen as a brand ambassador for the pants company Dockers. He was named one of four "Men of Style" in their new campaign. The Dockers' "Men of Style" campaign showcases some of the most influential men in the world of style and their stories.You can check out Peter Brathwaite's interview on the Dockers website, where he talks about his career, his favorite hangouts and his sense of style. You can also watch his video here: You can next see the Manchester native live at the Brighton Festival where he's singing the role of Billy Bone in the world premiere of Captain Blood's Revenge, a pirate opera, produced by Glyndebourne with music by Lynne Plowman and words by Martin Riley. Performances are on May 24 and 25 and tickets are available online. In June, he heads to the Nationale Reisopera in The Netherlands for Randal Corsen's new opera Katibu di Shon. The Opera “Katibu di Shon,” based on the novel Slave and Master, an “histoire perfumée” by Carel de Haseth, tells the story of Wilmu a slave owner, and slave Luis, two boys growing up together and their feelings for slave Anita. This triangle ends up in a confrontation between the two boys, between slave and master. The premiere will take place at Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg in front of the new King of The Netherlands.

Every time I enter the Royal Opera House I go see this photo. I like to spend a few moments there at the end of the performance, after every body else leaves. It's a thing of mine. I noticed that the photos atound it changed in time, but this is always there, in that precise place. Next visit at ROH, in July. Looking forward! Have a nice weekend!

Sir Jack Lyons Theatre, Royal Academy of Music Dido – Sarah Shorter Belinda – Sónia Grané Second Woman – Helen Bailey Sorceress – Rozanna Madylus First Witch – Tereza Gevorgyan Second Witch – Irina Loskova Spirit – Rosalind Coad Aeneas – Samuel Pantcheff Sailor – Ross Scanlon Sandy, Officer 1 – Iain Milne Blazes, Officer 2 – Samuel Queen Arthur. Officer 3, Voice of the Cards – Andri Björn Róbertsson John Ramster (director) Jake Wiltshire (lighting) Patrick Doyle (costumes) Chorus Royal Academy Sinfonia Iain Ledingham, Lionel Friend (conductors) Samuel Queen (Blazes), Andri Björn Róbertsson (Arthur) and Iain Milne (Sandy). Pictures © Royal Academy of Music, May 2013 Not the most obvious of pairings, perhaps: Dido and Aeneas and Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’s The Lighthouse. One can certainly find connections if one tries, as director John Ramster valiantly did in his director’s note, especially with respect to the role of Fate. And of course one can make connections between most things if so inclined, when placed together. This, however, seemed more like an evening of two halves. The performance of The Lighthouse was spectacularly good, at least a match for the recent English Touring Opera production, and arguably still more theatrically gripping. (How fortunate we are to have had two stagings in close succession!) There was not a great deal in the way of scenery; much was done with Jake Wiltshire’s brilliant – at some points, literally so – lighting, by turns suggestive of the lighthouse itself, the red eyes of the Beast, and much more. Ramster and his colleagues engendered a terrifying sense of claustrophobia and whatever horror – production, like opera, leaves matters tantalisingly unclear – it is that actually takes place. The sheer hell of being cooped up together, the promise of release having clearly been frustrated more than once, is conveyed viscerally, more by the characters’ interaction than anything external, and thus all the more powerful for it. For that, of course, the three singers should claim a great deal of credit. Andri Björn Róbertsson struck Calvinistic terror into the heart as the hypocritical fundamentalist, Sandy. From the moment of saying grace, his sonorous deep bass, combined with charismatic stage presence, had one thinking of a perverted (anti-)Christ figure. His physical excitement during Blazes’ song, offered attempted release in more than one sense. Samuel Queen and Iain Milne presented a nicely ambiguous Blazes and Sandy, quite as impressive as actors as singers. Lionel Friend’s direction of the Royal Academy Sinfonia was quite beyond reproach; after a lacklustre showing in the first half (about which, more below), the orchestra sounded rejuvenated: precise, sardonic, and at times overpowering. The knife-edge balance between fatalism and human agency on stage was replicated, indeed engendered, in the pit. Quite outstanding! What a difference a conductor makes, for Iain Ledingham’s direction of the same orchestra in Dido and Aeneas had been disappointing. Adopting that strange practice of having modern strings simply eschew vibrato, as if that somehow were enough to qualify as an ‘authentic’ performance, whatever that might be, Ledingham set the tone for what was to follow in the Overture: listless, hard-driven, and with sonority redolent of a school orchestra. (It was certainly not in any sense the players’ fault, as The Lighthouse demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt.) If only Friend had conducted both. Vocal performances were less impressive too, or rather they were in the title roles. After a shaky start, Sarah Shorter recovered well, but was so let down by Ledingham’s conducting that it was difficult to reach any proper judgement. Samuel Pantcheff sounded out of sorts as Aeneas; maybe he was under the weather. Not for the first time, though, Sónia Grané shone,

I was there at the Royal Academy this evening.  Primarily for Peter Maxwell Davies' The Lighthouse.  This piece is now something of a classic.  A production by Peter Sellars in Boston around 1984 brought further attention to this brilliant young director.  Indeed it was the reason for my becoming interested in him and subsequently bringing him to Glyndebourne.  And The Lighthouse was also produced by COT 23 years ago to great acclaim.  COT's founder Alan Stone was a brilliantly innovative producer - this should not be forgotten. The performance of The Lighthouse this evening was the Royal Academy of Music Opera at its best.  The small cast, of just three men, was remarkably accomplished in every department and made the most of this extremely disturbing but effective One Acter.  So hats off to Iain Milne, Samuel Queen and Andri Björn Róbertsson, and the distinguished and authoritative Lionel Friend in the pit, for bringing this piece off so well. We had a "curtain raiser" (well there was actually no curtain) in the form of Dido and Aeneas.  This is a pretty tricky piece to pull off.  it may have been first performed at  a girl's boarding school in Chelsea - but for the full effect it needs the strongest forces of an established  opera company both on the stage in in the provision of technical resources.  But we had some lovely performances, notably from Rozanna Madylus (Sorceress) Sónia Grané (Belinda) and Tereza Gevorgyan (First Witch).  And yet another former Glyndebourne music staffer from the 1970s/80s vintage, Iain Ledingham, conducted. Meanwhile back in Chicago COT has announced its 2014 season.  This is a further development of a completely new direction for the company.  Some interesting stuff there - but nothing written in the distant past of the 17th 18th or 19th centuries.  But I am sure that it will be an appealing program for people passionate about music theater in all its manifestations. However I do hope that, when they have run out of 20th century pieces deserving of revival, the older reaches of the opera repertoire will be mined again.  All in good time! I have a busy family weekend about town and in Sussex. 

An exciting performance of Verdi's "I Lombardi" from Rome, 1969 under Gianandrea Gavazzeni, with Renata Scotto, Luciano Pavarorri, Ruggero Raimondi, Anna di Stasio (Viclinda), and Umberto Grilli (Arvino.)

http://www.paris-opera-awards.fr/parisoperraawards-9480.html

Rossini’s La donna del Lago at the Royal Opera House boasts a superstar cast. Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez are perhaps the best in these roles in the business at this time. Yet the conductor Michele Mariotti is also hot news.

Henry, who filmed the preview featurette for Still Falls the Rain last year, has recently posted a short about some friends who built a house boat out in San Francisco. The video tells the story of the moment they found out if their house would float or sink. There are some amazing shots of their house (which was recently profiled in the New York Times) floating across the San Francisco Bay. ARCHIMEDES' PRINCIPLE –– short-doc from CLUBSODA on Vimeo.Check it out - it's a little fun for your friday.

Yuja Wang in recital at Carnegie Hall. by Paul J. Pelkonen Yuja Wang. Photo by Xavier Antoinet. Image © 2013 YujaWang.com. In the course of this young decade, the pianist Yuja Wang has emerged as one of the most galvanizing artists of the keyboard appearing on concert stages. Her rock-solid virtuosity, brave repertory decisions and habit of playing recitals in a minimal black dress and a dazzling pair of heels have made her a piano celebrity, the kind that comes along once in a generation. On Thursday night, Ms. Wang returned to the stage of Carnegie Hall with a taut, self-contained program of compact works perfectly suited to her aggressive piano style. This recital bridged modern American music (by Lowell Liebermann) with Scriabin, Rachmaninoff and Ravel, early 20th century masters whose piano writing continues to challenge soloists, even at Ms. Wang's level of skill. The program opened with Mr. Liebermann's Gargoyles, a four-part work that mirrored the structure of a classical sonata without necessarily adhering to the form. Ms. Wang's skill in playing sinewy ostinatos and dazzling runs up the keyboard were very much at the fore, as she pounded out rhythms suggestive of Stravinsky and Dukas. She shifted gears between the four mini-movements, culminating in a driving finish that dazzled the ear and made a good case for the works of this contemporary composer. Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Sonata is one of his best known and loved works. Ms. Wang made the composer's characteristic melodies and powerful Slavic rhythms glisten with a sharp, modern edge. Stripping this work of its sentimentality is no easy feat. However. Ms. Wang made the sweep and grandeur of the big tunes were still present, along with the immaculate musical logic that courses through the three movements. Given her pedal-to-the-metal approach, it was the last movement that emerged as the most impressive, with the whole Rondo culminating in a final, thundering chord. The second half of the program (played in that oh-so-controversial bright orange dress) was much more interesting. Ms. Wang took on a pair of piano sonatas by Aleksandr Scriabin, the Russian composer (and schoolmate of Rachmaninoff's) whose career was characterized by a strange trajectory into theosophy, yoga, and a plan to mount a world-ending concert in India complete with colors and scents that would maximize the sensory overload of his music. Scriabin's Second Piano Sonata dates from an earlier period, but it is still unconventional, with strange beams of light and melody emerging from dense textures and clouds of sound. It was followed by the Sixth Sonata, a work painted in various tones of black and umber that so scared the sensitive composer that he refused to play it. Ms. Wang had no such inhibitions. She highlighted the gleaming, jewel-like melodies of the Second with an astonishing display of fast, light-fingered playing. The Sixth was even better, with a rock-solid rhythmic foundation that let the listener grasp this eccentric composer's true intent. Ms. Wang ended her concert with Maurice Ravel's one-piano version of La Valse, the orchestral tone poem that uses this beloved Viennese theme to reflect on the death and destruction of World War One. Following the two Scriabin works, La Valse functioned as the logical third movement of a larger musical structure. As Ravel collapsed his original tonal triple-time theme into crashing tone clusters in the bass register, one heard the bleak despair of the Scriabin Sixth echoed and redoubled in the last bars. The concert concluded with a brace of encores, met with rapturous applause from the suddenly diminishing audience. Ms. Wang treated her listeners to a difficult one-two punch of Rachmaninoff (the Élégie in E-flat minor and Prokofiev, reaching all the way back in that composer's oeuvre for his first opus number, the Toccata No. 1. This astonishing display of rhythmic playing and wrist strength was followed by Vl