The Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House was opened to the public in May 1858, with a performance of Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots. Winter and Summer seasons of opera and ballet were given and between seasons the theatre was either closed or used for film shows, cabaret, dancing and lectures. The opera hosue reopened after the war in 1946, with a gala performance of The Sleeping Beauty.
Other performers and performances to take place at the Royal Opera House include: La Fille du Regiment, The Royal Ballet and Carmen.
Covent Garden
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The Royal Opera presents the first UK staging of Irish composer Gerald Barry’s gleefully inventive opera The Importance of Being Earnest. The work had its concert premiere in London in 2012 and was met with huge acclaim.
Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana was commissioned by the Royal Opera House to mark the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953. William Plomer drew on Lytton Strachey’s Elizabeth and Essex to create the libretto, which artfully combines modern and archaic forms of English. Britten’s score is similarly diverse: it mixes the sounds and manners of Tudor England – from lute songs to courtly dances – with the composer’s own distinctive style.
La donna del lago is one of the most lyrical of Gioachino Rossini’s operas, with expansive ensembles and shimmering orchestration. It is based on Walter Scott’s 1810 poem The Lady of the Lake and features a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola. Although its premiere in Naples in 1819 was a success it was rarely staged throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries. John Fulljames’s new production provides an opportunity to experience an underperformed gem.
Politics and religion are dangerously entwined in Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo. Based on a 1787 play by Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlo was first performed at the Paris Opéra in 1867. Verdi made extensive revisions to the opera over the following 20 years. This production by Nicholas Hytner follows the five-act 1882 version – Verdi’s final thoughts on the work.
The Royal Ballet's Hansel and Gretel grips with warped pleasures in the first act, but loses its way in the second, says Mark Monahan.
Coliseum, London On Thursday a great silence settled over London's dance world. For 10 days we'd been in the grip of Hurricane Natalia, and then suddenly she was gone and we were left dazedly trying to reshape our certainties. London has seen Natalia Osipova before, in Don Quixote , Le Corsaire and other hokey spectaculars with the Bolshoi, but her dancing in this two-week season with the Mikhailovsky Ballet of St Petersburg , alongside on- and offstage partner Ivan Vasiliev , was of another order altogether.
