The U.K.'s Royal Opera has announced details of its 2014/15 season. There are seven new main-house productions including a new opera from Philip Glass, a final bow for the classic John Copley La Boheme and a welcome return for Mark Anthony Turnage's Anna Nicole.
Music director Antonio Pappano again conducts the Turnage, which depicts the glamorous but ultimately doomed life of Anna Nicole Smith. The cast is much the same as when new, Eva-Maria Westbroek in the title-role, Alan Oke as her aged husband but with Rodney Gilfry in the seedy role Gerald Finley created, The Lawyer Stern. There's a new work from Philip Glass in the Linbury Studio, The Trial - based on the famous Kafka novel - with a Christopher Hampton libretto. Another new opera, Sorens Nils Eichberg's thriller Glare, will also grace the Linbury. And the same auditorium will see the Jette Young Artists stage Rossini's rarely-heard La scala di seta.
Plácido Domingo plays Foscari the elder in Verdi's I due Foscari, a new production from Thasseus Strassberger, with Pappano in the pit and Francesco Meli in the tenor role Domingo once sang in this house. Mark Minkowski conducts another new staging, Mozart's Idomeneo (directed by Martin Kurej) with a cast including Matthew Polenzani and Sophie Bevan.
Perhaps most exciting, former Royal Shakespeare Company artistic director Michael Boyd will direct Monteverdi's Orfeo, not at Covent Garden but at the highly atmospheric Roundhouse in Camden. The cast includes Susan Bickley, Gyula Orendt and Susanna Hurrell. Christian Curnyn conducts.
Katherina Thoma will direct a new production of Verdi's Un ballo in maschera with Joseph Calleja's Riccardo, a part that should suit him down to the ground. Nice too to see the return of Rosemary Joshua, as Oscar.
Another leading tenor, Jonas Kaufmann, will bring another verismo hit to the house (he's done a string of them there), Giordano's Andrea Chenier. Pappano conducts, Zeljko Lucic is Gérard, Westbroek is Maddalena. In a couple of luxury cameos, Denyce Graves is Bersi, and Rosalind Plowright the Countessa de Coigny (and Peter Coleman-Wright is Pietro, since you ask).
In spring 2015, Mark Wigglesworth conducts a new production (by John Fulijames) of Kurt Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. The cast includes Anne Sofie von Otter, Peter Hoare, Willard W White, Christine Rice and Kurt Streit.
Szymanowski's magnificent but rare King Roger gets a production from Kasper Holten, with Pappano at the helm. Mariusz Kwiecien takes the title-role, alongside Samir Pirgu Georgia Jarman, Kim Begley and Alan Ewing. And a Harrison Birtwistle double-bill in the Linbury includes a new work, The Corridor.
Another newbie from Pappano, Rossini's William Tell (French version), a work he has recorded with some of the Royal Opera's cast -- Gerald Finley and John Osborn. Rossinians will be drooling.
In a very full season, some other highlights at random ---Simon Keenlyside's Rigoletto, Bryn Terfel's Dulcamara and Dutchman, Nina Stemme's Isolde (opposite Stephen Gould, for Pappano), Toby Spence's Tamino, Kristine Opolais's Butterfly for Nicola Luisotti, Domingo's Germont, Netrebko and Calleja in Boheme for Dan Ettinger, Ambrogio Maestri and Marina Poplavskaya in Falstaff for Michael Schonwandt, and an Il turco in Italia (Rossini) that combines the talents of Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, Aleksandra Kurzak, Alessandro Corbelli, Barry Banks and Thomas Allen. And, to complete a Domingo triple, his Operalia competition comes to Covent Garden for the first time.
