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Jun. 9th, 2008 11:09 amSo I'm in Russia.
Anyway, I saw Benvenuto Cellini at the Mariinsky Concert Hall. It was - well, the best word to describe it is "interesting." On the plus side, I thought that they used their tiny stage very well. On the minus side, Cellini and Fieramosca wore bunny suits instead of monk's robes during the first finale.
It was, of course, updated to this century, and set in a jewellery store. Teresa wore a pantsuit for the first act - which I do not approve of. Interestingly enough, the production used the non-revised version of the first act, so "entre l'amour et le devoir" was replaced by something else that wasn't as good. This was particularly disappointing because I liked the soprano very much.
All the singers were very good, in fact, although Cellini was singing for the Met and not for this stage, so his voice was rather overpowering. Nonetheless, I'll take his "seul pour lutter" over Ben Heppner's any day.
(Ascanio was called Ascania, I think. An interesting way to deal with pants roles in modern productions - she was wearing a dress and all. It was confusing.)
Speaking of confusing, there were no subtitles and the dialogs were in Russian, so I was on my memory and the scraps of French I could pick up for understanding what was going on. I didn't really.
Anyway, I saw Benvenuto Cellini at the Mariinsky Concert Hall. It was - well, the best word to describe it is "interesting." On the plus side, I thought that they used their tiny stage very well. On the minus side, Cellini and Fieramosca wore bunny suits instead of monk's robes during the first finale.
It was, of course, updated to this century, and set in a jewellery store. Teresa wore a pantsuit for the first act - which I do not approve of. Interestingly enough, the production used the non-revised version of the first act, so "entre l'amour et le devoir" was replaced by something else that wasn't as good. This was particularly disappointing because I liked the soprano very much.
All the singers were very good, in fact, although Cellini was singing for the Met and not for this stage, so his voice was rather overpowering. Nonetheless, I'll take his "seul pour lutter" over Ben Heppner's any day.
(Ascanio was called Ascania, I think. An interesting way to deal with pants roles in modern productions - she was wearing a dress and all. It was confusing.)
Speaking of confusing, there were no subtitles and the dialogs were in Russian, so I was on my memory and the scraps of French I could pick up for understanding what was going on. I didn't really.
