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OPERA

The mother of all art forms. According to opera lovers.

Prokofiev's satirical fairy tale is a visual feast

What makes an opera a success? The eccentrics, airheads, comedians, lyricists and tragedians think they know, proclaiming their point of view at the craziest moments and not even bothering to intervene in the action. Welcome to the wonderful world of Prokofiev's L'amour des trois oranges, back on stage at Amsterdam's Music Theatre this month.

At the centre seems to be an absurdist fairy tale about a hypochondriac prince who is tricked by a sorceress into falling in love with three orange...

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Prokofiev fairytale opera on repeat

L'amour des trois oranges

In 2005, director Laurent Pelly and conductor Stéphane Denève enchanted Dutch audiences with their vision of Sergei Prokofiev's L'amour des trois oranges. With its inventive sets, supremely musical direction, dazzling costumes and superb performances by soloists, DNO's Choir and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, this production by the Netherlands Opera met the most highly tense...

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Only in final scene does Guillaume Tell bathe in golden sunlight

After more than four hours, it happens: emotion. Free Switzerland is bathed in golden sunlight and the chorus swells over the most beautiful orchestral sounds Rossini composed. Unworldly sounds, which have little to do with the best-known sounds from Guillaume Tell - the canter from the overture.

A lot may have happened in the previous four hours, but even the famous scene in which Tell has to shoot an apple off his infant son's head is not a dramatic highlight.

H...

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Die Zauberflöte II - Overwhelming, but then?

Zauberflöte

Two years ago he was acclaimed for his staging of A Dog's Heart by Alexander Raskatov, now he is lavishly believed for his production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. It premiered last week at The Netherlands Opera and last night too, the sold-out audience responded enthusiastically. Yet the high expectations were not quite met.

Simon McBurney makes Die Zauberflöte magical

A sound engineer making deafening sounds on stage with wads of paper. Puppetry that flows seamlessly into film projections and singers dubbed by actors. A primitive stage on stage that is, however, high tech. A performance in one of the largest halls in our country, but reminiscent of a flat-floor performance. A flat floor that can move in all directions, though, and could just as easily be a slope or a ceiling, that is....

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Getting there, right now! DNO retakes Das Rheingold

They had almost been thrown away: George Tsypin's immense sets for Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. Not because his staging was unsuccessful or would have become obsolete by now, but simply because storage was too hefty a cost for the Netherlands Opera.

Immense they are, the sets that designer and architect Tsypin first presented at De Nederlandse Opera almost 20 years ago. The Muziektheater's stage is among the largest in the world, the width is 32 ...

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Disquiet TV takes classical music out of a straitjacket

Classical music on television always has something boring about it. Often a short introduction by a neat gentleman or lady, followed by the concert itself. Close-ups of the conductor and soloist, a longshot of the entire orchestra and applause afterwards. As if the medium is trying to emulate concert hall etiquette as scrupulously as possible. Even the webstreams that more and more large orchestras are increasingly turning to barely deviate from this formula.

Ed Spanjaard unleashes primal forces in Götterdämmerung Reisopera

The final applause after the premiere of Götterdämmerung stormy, is an understatement. It seemed as if the completely sold-out auditorium wanted to surpass the primal forces extracted from the Gelders Orkest by Ed Spanjaard. History was made here: on stage, by the soloists and choir, in the orchestra pit and behind the scenes, for six hours and 20 minutes.

Götterdämmerung marks end and new beginning Reisopera

It is the first mass scene in Wagner's Ring: Siegfried leads Brünnhilde to the Gibichungenburg and Hagen summons all his men. From the side stage there is literally a deafening blare of horns, but conductor Ed Spanjaard lets it play on. And rightly so: the orchestra has a spark. The whole stage is filled in an instant and the choir swells in strength, louder and louder, ever louder, until the ecstatic apotheosis:

Gross Glück und Heil lacht nun dem Rhein

While the choir of...

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Der Schatzgräber II: Van Hove exposes core and weaknesses

"That fairytale world has never been my world," director Ivo van Hove declared before the premiere of Schreker's fairytale opera Der Schatzgräber. Remarkable, as Van Hove and his regular scenographer Jan Versweyveld were previously responsible at De Nederlandse Opera for Tchaikovsky's Iolanta and Janáček's The Makropulos Case - also fairy tales rather than grand dramatic works.

Tchaikovsky's last opera is all about Princess Iolanta. Everyone knows she is blind, but keeps...

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The Red Kimono: a fine painting but mediocre musical theatre #HF12

It begins beautifully. Prominently displayed on stage is Breitner's painting The Red Kimono. And not a copy, but the real thing, which is further underlined by the Stedelijk Museum's large number of crates, on which the musicians of the Hexagon Ensemble are also placed. Actor and dancer Michael Schumacher casually walks up to it and looks at the painting for about a minute - the average time a museum visitor looks at a painting.

Far too short, mene...

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Iván Fischer sets new Wagner standard

That Pierre Audi does not shy away from religious symbolism is well known, but the true miracle with Parsifal by the Netherlands Opera is in the pit. There, in the hands of master conductor Iván Fischer, the Concertgebouw Orchestra sets a new Wagner standard. Despite a gigantic orchestral strength, almost chamber music-like lightness, extraordinarily transparent and, thanks to careful tempo choices, with wonderful dramatic tension. Five hours long.

And that's just as well, because dramatic tension is...

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How a Martian looks at opera

Or: the familiar becomes utterly alien here. Or: embracing meaninglessness as the first principle. One hundred years after his birth, John Cage takes centre stage in HF weekend.
Ever since Reinbert de Leeuw played it in the fastest talk show on Dutch television, John Cage's 4'33" has been a well-known composition in our country. For exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds, the musician does not play a single note and the audience hears nothing but the ambient sounds.

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Micha Hamel's Requiem is beautifully spatial but lacks substantive urgency #hf12

In his Requiem for tenor, narrator and ensemble, Micha Hamel makes the most of the space of Amsterdam's De Duif church. Musicians play on the altar, from the balconies, mingle among the audience and push out a piano. - But what does Hamel really want to say? In front of a sold-out house, Micha Hamel's Requiem premiered last night. He ... 

Eastern orchestras settle 40% rebate on musicians' salaries and union is sidelined

[recap] In order to avoid having to merge ánd bring in an extra half a million each, the orchestras in Overijssel and Gelderland made very ambitious plans. Which bear striking similarities. Both orchestras requested and received money from the province, albeit much less than requested. In theory, this would compensate for the reduction in the state subsidy, but that provincial money is mainly meant to reform the organisation. However, it is not enough for that. Not nearly enough...

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How two orchestras sold an international revenue model as regional

Recap: There are too many orchestras in the Netherlands, the government thinks, and so a few have to go. Or merge. Now that forced merging doesn't seem to go very heartily. But you can make money out of it. In Gelderland and Overijssel, this leads to bizarre scenes. It would have been comical if it hadn't cost so much money.
To bring in an extra five tonnes, the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra and the Gelderland Orchestra are pulling together. And with success: the provincial authorities of Overi...

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Orchestras in eastern Netherlands go slating

Nearly thirteen million The Gelderland Orchestra (HGO) asked for the province of Gelderland. It got three-and-a-half. Just enough to absorb the reduction in the state subsidy for the next two years and to work towards a new organisational structure and a new revenue model, as described in a very ambitious business plan, which...... wait a minute. We have already written about this, haven't we?

True. It is like two drops of water to our story about the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra, the former Orkes...

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Amsterdam takes Netherlands Symphony Orchestra to court

We already wrote at length about the Orkest van het Oosten's name change to the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra (NSO). The curious opera grant application based on a business plan that carries huge risks also had our full attention. Permanent partner the National Travel Opera was not amused.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra is also fighting the NSO. In the capital city, they think the Enschede orchestra's new name is very much like its own n...

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