Received in the mail this morning : program book for 'Morgen und Abend' in London

This Wednesday morning, I have received in the mail the program book for Morgen und Abend, by composer Georg Friedrich Haas.

It was first performed at the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden) in London on Friday November 13th. It is a 100 pages book and it contains :

- complete cast and crew ;
- black and white photos of rehearsals ;
- Waht Can It Mean ?, by Will Richmond ;
- The Music of Georg Friedrich Haas; by Tim Rutherford-Johnson ;
- 'Perhaps...' : Jon Fosse in the Theatre, by Andrew Dickson ;
- The Undiscovered Country, by Andrew Davison ;
- extensive biographies of composer Georg Friedrich Haas and librettist Jon Fosse ;
- biographies of artists, most of them with black and white headshots.

In this flickr folder, you can see the scanned covers of all 382 program books for contemporary operas I have in my collection.

Today : world première of 'Morgen und Abend' by Georg Friedrich Haas in London

Today, the new opera composed by Georg Friedrich Haas, Morgen und Abend, with a libretto by Jon Fosse, will be performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in London.

It is the composer's seventh opera, since Adolf Wölfli (Graz, 1981). His work for the stage includes Melancholia (Paris, 2008), Bluthaus (Schwetzingen, 2011, revised for Hamburg, 2014) and Thomas (Schwetzingen, 2013).

Johannes the fisherman, a simple man in the autumn of his years, recalls his past life, the two people who meant most to him – his wife and his friend Peter, who have both long since passed away. Johannes’ yearning will come to an end on this day. When his daughter comes to check on him the following morning, she finds him dead. (reproduced from the publisher website)

The cast includes actor Klaus Maria Brandauer (Olai), baritone Christoph Pohl (Johannes), soprano Sarah Wegener (Signe / Midwife), tenor Will Hartmann (Peter) and alto Helena Rasker (Erna). Michael Boder conducts the Royal Opera Chorus and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. Graham Vick directs.

The orchestra is the following :

- 3 flutes (all doubling piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn (3rd doubling oboe), 2 clarinets in B, bass clarinet in B (doubling clarinet in E flat) , 2 bassoons, 1 contrabassoon ;
- 4 horns in F, 2 trumpets in C, 2 trombones, tuba ;
- timpani and 2 percussions, accordion ;
- strings (12-10-8-8-6).

The opera should last about 90 minutes. The opera will be broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on December 5th. The same production will be performed at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin in April 2016. The full score is available for viewing on the Universal Edition website.

New season 2014-2015 at the Opéra National de Paris

Here are the operas to be performed in Palais Garnier and Opéra Bastille during the 2014-2015 season : 

- Giuseppe Verdi : La Traviata

- Gioachino Rossini : Il Barbiere di Siviglia

- Giacomo Puccini : Tosca

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : Die Entführung aus dem Serail

- Engelbert Humperdinck : Hänsel und Gretel

- Giacomo Puccini : La Bohème

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : Don Giovanni

- Richard Strauss : Ariadne auf Naxos

- Claude Debussy : Pelléas et Mélisande

- Charles Gounod : Faust

- Jules Massenet : Le Cid

- Antonin Dvorak : Rusalka

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart : Die Zauberflöte

- Ernest Chausson : Le roi Arthus

- Christoph Willibald Gluck : Alceste

- Francesco Cilea : Adriana Lecouvreur 

16 operas by 12 composers in four languages. 

14 of these operas are among the most performed in the world.

In the foreword to the season program book, the general manager Nicolas Joel writes about six new productions : “Six nouvelles productions lyriques”. But, if you decide to check for yourself, you’ll find out there are only 3 (Tosca, Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Le roi Arthus). What a shame !

- Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia : directed by Damiano Michieletto, it has already been staged in Geneva in 2010, Reggio Emilia, Saint-Etienne and Firenze ; 

- Massenet’s Le Cid: directed by Charles Roubaud, it has been staged in Marseille in June 2011 ;

- Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur : directed by David McVicar, it has been staged in London in November 2010, and then in Barcelona and Vienna. 

The only two productions that could be of interest are Le Cid and Le roi Arthus. But Nicolas Joel is really not lucky, considering the Chausson opera has just been performed by the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg and Mulhouse.

Therefore we have 3 real new productions, 3 false new productions, and 10 revivals.

Here are the world premiere performances that took place at Opéra national de Paris since 2007 : 

- Georg Friedrich Haas : Melancholia, June 2008 ; 

- Philippe Boesmans : Yvonne princesse de Bourgogne, January 2009 ; 

- Bruno Mantovani : Akhmatova, March 2011 ;

- Philippe Fénelon : La Cerisaie, January 2012 (it had been performed in concert in Moscow in December 2010). 

Since then, Opéra national de Paris has done nothing to promote living composers, ensuring their defection to foreign countries to have their operas performed (for example, Marc-André Dalbavie’s opera Charlotte Salomon will be performed next Summer in Salzburg).

We have no operas in Russian or English, no contemporary or even modern work (in fact no opera composed in the last 98 years, since Ariadne auf Naxos), no opera that has not been recorded.

At least, the casts will include some of the most famous singers of our time : Dmitri Hvorostovsky in La Traviata, Marcelo Alvarez and Ludovic Tézier in Tosca, Erwin Schrott in Don Giovanni, Franz Grundheber, Sophie Koch and Klaus Florian Vogt in Ariadne auf Naxos, Stéphane Degout in Pelléas et Mélisande, Piotr Beczala in Faust, Anna Caterina Antonacci, Annick Massis and Roberto Alagna in Le Cid, Sophie Koch, Thomas Hampson and Roberto Alagna in Le roi Arthus, Véronique Gens and Stéphane Degout in Alceste, Marcelo Alvarez and Angela Gheorghiu in Adriana Lecouvreur.

Unfortunately, these great casts can barely hide the poverty of this unchallenging season.