An enforced pause

Measures aimed to discourage the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19 were announced by the British Prime Minister on Monday evening 16 March 2020. These included strong advice to practise 'social distancing' as a precaution, quite apart from any personal necessity to embark on self-isolation.

This has resulted in the closure of galleries, museums, theatres, opera houses, cinemas and concert halls. Consequently this blog will fall silent for the foreseeable future - not for lack of will on my part, but for lack of opportunity.

I wish all my readers well in the meantime.

Madam Butterfly

by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica

seen at the London Coliseum on 29 February 2020

This is ENO's revival (by no means the first) of Anthony Minghella's 2005 production (here directed by Glen Sheppard), with Natalya Romaniw as Cio-Cio-San (Madam Butterfly), Stephanie Windsor-Lewis as Suzuki, Dimitri Pittas as Pinkerton and Roderick Williams as Consul Sharpless; set design by Michael Levine and costumes by Han Feng. 

Luisa Miller

by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Salvadore Cammarano

seen at the London Coliseum on 19 February 2020

Barbara Horáková directs Elizabeth Llewellyn as the titular heroine Luisa, David Junghoon Kim as her lover Rodolfo, Olafur Sigurdason as her father the Miller, James Creswell as Rodolfo's father Count Walter and Solomon Howard as Count Waler's aide Wurm, with Christine Rice as Count Walter's niece Federica, Nadine Benjamin as Luisa's friend Laura, and Adam Sullivan as an unnamed citizen. Alexander Joel was the conductor, and the set designer was Andrew Lieberman, with costumes by Eva-Maria Van Acker.

This 1849 opera saw Verdi turn from heroic politico-historical subjects to a more intimate setting in which political forces might well be at play, but domestic loyalties and betrayals are equally if not more significant. His libretto was based on a Schiller play, Kabale und Liebe (roughly, Intrigue and Love), though as might be exected the action was simplified and abbreviated. The situation is a familiar tale - a lowly girl and a young nobleman in disguise fall in love, and face travails in the form of parental opposition (on both sides), confusion on Luisa's part when she discovers that Rodolfo is not whom she thought, and finally disaster as Count Walter and Wurm ensnare her in dishonesty so hat her father may be freed from arrest and torture. Rodolfo, in despair at being forced to marry his cousin Federica, and revolted by Luisa's apparent betrayals, contrives for them both to drink poison; in the throes of death she can assert her true love for the dying Rodolfo, and the youngters leave their respective fathers desolate.