More trouble at ENO

[Prommer]

Really looking forward to Aida... Latonia Moore made a sensational debut at the Met with this a few years ago. Add Brindley Sherratt and Gwyn Hughes Jones...

No idea about the producer. Also choice of conductor is...er... interesting? Can anyone comment other than to point out she is Mrs Gelb?

[Darkbloom]

Really looking forward to Aida... Latonia Moore made a sensational debut at the Met with this a few years ago. Add Brindley Sherratt and Gwyn Hughes Jones...

No idea about the producer. Also choice of conductor is...er... interesting? Can anyone comment other than to point out she is Mrs Gelb?

Interesting to see Michelle DeYoung as Amneris. I haven't seen her around for a while and it seems an unusual place for her to pop up.

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

Really looking forward to Aida... Latonia Moore made a sensational debut at the Met with this a few years ago.

I've just published an interview with Latonia Moore:

https://bachtrack.com/interview-latonia-moore-aida-eno-mcdermott-september-2017

[Prommer]

Just seen the dress rehearsal: worth seeing! Don't want to give much mo(o)re away.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Just seen the dress rehearsal: worth seeing! Don't want to give much mo(o)re away.

Thanks - although Aida is more or less unshiftable in terms of its historic setting I don't mind if it's set in the Weimar Republic as long as there is a good standard of Verdi singing ?

[Prommer]

Not bad! A little uneven today, but it was a dress - and no Brindley Sherratt who is out for first three perfs.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Thanks v. much - my word Gwyn Hughes jones is doing a lot of perfs - hope he has a plentiful supply of throat spray.

[subcontrabass]

Problems continue: https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...-griffin-quits

[Cockney Sparrow]

Are there still a high or significant number of seats unsold for opera performances? - at least, that is, at the optimistic price they initially ask for (and prices which presumably are key to their financial plans stacking up).

The Coliseum is such a barn of a place - I'm sure someone would want it, so why not sell it and use other houses such as Sadlers Wells, and other London theatres? (Smaller houses, smaller sets, more proportionate to the voices they use, they might sell a higher precentage of the seats....)

Its a sad end - compared to the days of Pountney and Elder when I started my opera going and bought tickets in their subscription scheme. (Having said that - are there any competent directors willing to take ENO on - managerially its been a disaster and one can only feel great sympathy for the orchestral and chorus staff after the chequered decade or so they have endured).

[gradus]

Is there an audience of sufficient size to sustain opera in English these days? I realise that there has been but ENO might do better if it mounted productions sung in the original tongue as well as the English repertoire which gets pretty modest service at the ROH.

[Stanfordian]

Is there an audience of sufficient size to sustain opera in English these days? I realise that there has been but ENO might do better if it mounted productions sung in the original tongue as well as the English repertoire which gets pretty modest service at the ROH.

With sub/sur/super/titles in English I'm extremely happy with original language opera.

[Conchis]

Maybe ENO can expect a ‘Brexit bonus’?

After all, if the (s)will of the people is correctly applied to arts policy, it means MORE funding for ENO and less (much less) for Covent Garden.

Seriously, I don’t see the point in ‘adapting’ librettos into English, as no-one can hear what is being sung, anyway; and a ‘British only’ policy would result in a very small repertoire.

I think the idea of Opera in English is pretty much dead nowadays.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

With sub/sur/super/titles in English I'm extremely happy with original language opera.

I don’t see the point in ‘adapting’ librettos into English, as no-one can hear what is being sung, anyway
I think the idea of Opera in English is pretty much dead nowadays.

[Mal]

With the Chandos Magic Flute you can hear most of what is being sung, and they provide a full English libretto, and it's a lot easier checking the English libretto, now and again, than translating everything from German. I was so impressed with this performance that I ordered the Chandos Fidelio. Schubert's Winter Journey, sung in Engish, by Roderick Williams was released recently and is doing very well. So I don't see that Opera (and songs) sung in English are dead at all. Is it surprising that people like to understand what they are listening to?

[vinteuil]

With the Chandos Magic Flute you can hear most of what is being sung, and they provide a full English libretto, and it's a lot easier checking the English libretto, now and again, than translating everything from German. I was so impressed with this performance that I ordered the Chandos Fidelio. Schubert's Winter Journey, sung in Engish, by Roderick Williams was released recently and is doing very well. So I don't see that Opera (and songs) sung in English are dead at all. Is it surprising that people like to understand what they are listening to?

... for me, often the words get in the way. The cringe that comes with the libretti of Tippett - the clunkiness of even the best English language versions of Wagner.

I'm glad here that my grasp of Italian and German is pretty loose - if I really understood every word of the famous arias 'È pericoloso sporgersi...' or 'Nicht Hinauslehnen!' I wouldn't enjoy them half as much....


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