Royal Opera
Radio Broadcast 9th February 2007
Okay so I didn’t actually get to see this because somebody who so wasn’t me cocked up the booking but I thought I should review it anyway. Not in a mcmungo type way, I heard the radio broadcast so I’m reviewing that.
This production that sells out every time. But it probably went even quicker when the lead soprano is so hot, even people who hate opera fancy her.
The soprano I’m talking about is the soprano everyone’s talking about and that’s Anna Netrebko. The one who Erwin Schrott got pregnant. I mean lucky guy and everything but last I heard he was married with kids and she was with someone else. None of the papers seem to have mentioned that though.
Anna’s Violetta didn’t seem like a really nice person. She could sing all the music easily but her voice had a bit of a hard edge like all the time. It’s annoying really because I know she can do better than that but she did miss the first night because she had a throat infection or something so maybe that was affecting her singing but it definately didn’t sound like anything to rave about. It’s annoying really because she really is a great singer and she’s a brilliant actress too but it’s like she never sings her best now she’s got really famous. I don’t know if she’s got up herself or if she is just singing how most people want to hear it but I liked her better before she got all world famous really.
Jonas Kaufmann was really cool as Alfredo. He’s a bit pathetic sometimes but a nice guy and he really can sing. He’s a bit underrated actually. I’ve seen and heard him singing all sorts of roles and you always end up liking him. Alfredo is a bit of a prat of course but he’s a good bloke. Dmitri Hvorostovsky was fine as his dad Giorgio. He didn’t do all the subtle stuff Gerald Finley did, Dmitri can be quite one dimensional a lot of the time but he’s got a proper big Verdi voice so he’s good at being a wanker.
As usual they had lots of Young Artists in it. Monika-Evelin Liiv was Flora, she’s great in this sort of role. She was singing Second Lady too and that was just wrong but Flora suits her and she really brought the character out as well, she’s well sexy. I wish I could have seen her. Ji-Min Park was Gastone in this performance, he was sharing with the other young artist tenor Haoyin Xue and I think they were both covering Alfredo. Ji-Min was cool as Gastone and I reckon he’d have made a good Alfredo because he seems to like at all that serious stuff. Then they had Kostas Smoriginas as Marquis d’Obigny, not sure if he’s totally ready for Verdi yet but he’s a good singer.
Eddie Wade and Mark Beesley were Baron Douphol and Dr Grenvil, both good, then there were a few chorus people. Charbel Mattar was the Messenger, he’s great but he shouldn’t be in the chorus, he should be singing bigger roles than that but loads of the chorus are brilliant. Hairy reckons Neil Gillespie who sang Giuseppe was the star (so you can guess where he comes from). I think that’s going a bit far but he does get a lot out of that tiny role. I suppose you’d expect the ROH Chorus to be good really. You get so many less than brilliant people in leading roles, not Anna Netrebko, she was having a bad night probably and there’s loads of worse people out there. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone from the chorus who’s crap, one day they should all do an opera together in the Linbury maybe. I’d go.
FitCtit
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