Royal Opera at the Barbican
19th September 2006
Sometimes you get bad productions and sometimes you get bad performances and sometimes there are bad operas. This isn’t really any of those. There wasn’t anything wrong with the production. Well it was a concert performance and you can go wrong there but it’s not easy. There wasn’t anything wrong with the performance either, the singing was good mostly. So maybe you could say it was a bad opera but those are when you walk out saying that was a bad opera. La Juive is one of those where you walk out thinking like what was the point of that?
La Juive isn’t a bad opera, bad operas are interesting kind of. This was just a boring opera and it only got 2 stars because the singing was so good. And it wasn’t so bad to start off with when you were listening to all the voices. Marina Poplavskaya is a Young Artist at the ROH and she is just brilliant as well as being hot. She sang Rachel, the female lead, I thought she was lucky to get that but we were lucky to get her, she has a well good voice, nice sound and all the technical stuff seemed really easy for her and you did at first feel kind of just slightly interested in the character. Then there were 2 really good tenors which isn’t something you often get on the same stage, Dario Schmunck (that’s a well funny name) was Leopold, I think he’s a bit dodgy running around with Rachel when he’s married but he can still really sing. Then there was Dennis O’Neill who was Rachel’s dad, he’s getting on a bit now but his voice is still all there.
They also had lots of basses who can sing in tune, Alastair Miles (Colonel Brogni) was a bit wobbly to start with but after that he was just brilliant, I kind of want to be a tenor so I can get all the girls but if I was a baritone I could be Don Giovanni and Count Almaviva but then I hear low notes like that and it would be just so cool to be able to sing that low. Joachim Seipp (Ruggiero) and Matthew Rose (Albert) were well good too and then there were some good people in the Chorus, Hairy thinks Neil Gillespie as the Officer was especially good but he’s Scottish so he would say that wouldn’t he? I thought they were all good. Nicole Cabell was Leopold’s wife Princess Eudoxie, what kind of name is that? 2 words, babe. Deed. Poll. She was okay but there was loads of coloratura and it seemed a bit forced, she’s best at lyric stuff. But all the other critics think she was great so I might have got that wrong.
But the music, well could you even call it music? Some of it had bits of tune in but most it was just notes going on like forever and it was so boring. The end was good when they died in boiling water but even if there was a staged production I don’t think I could be bothered to wait for that bit.
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