John Fulljames

Juan Diego Flórez dazzled audiences and critics alike when he played the virtuoso role of Orphée in La Scala’s first ever staging of Gluck’s opera in its French version: “Juan Diego Flórez delivered a lesson in style. His tone is darker and his projection more self-effacing than in the past, but class is permanent. His agility and legato are utterly thrilling. The ovations were never-ending.” (Corriere della sera) The present release is a production by Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London Recorded live at Teatro alla Scala, Milan, March 2018. Gluck’s Orpheo ed Euridice was first performed in 1762. It is the first of Gluck’s “reform” operas, in which he attempted to replace the abstruse plots and overly complex music of opera sera with a “noble simplicity” in both the music and the drama. The present production was staged by Hofesh Shechter and John Fulljames.

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German-Jewish essayist, philosopher, and critic Walter Benjamin were one of the early 20th century's most influential thinkers, a light in the darkness of looming war and political oppression. In Benjamin, dernière nuit, composer Michel Tabachnik and librettist Régis Debray examine this life cruelly cut short by despair in the face of Nazism. Experience the opera here in its highly acclaimed 2016 premiere production at the Lyon Opera.

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A major work from the remarkable partnership of playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, Mahagonny was first performed in Leipzig in 1930. Its first ever Royal Opera staging, by Associate Director of Opera John Fulljames, is sung in English, and conducted by Mark Wigglesworth – recently announced as the successor to Edward Gardner as Music Director of English National Opera. Mahagonny is a satire on money, morality and pleasure-seeking among the dubious citizens of a fictional city. The richly varied, jazz-infused score, influenced by ragtime music, includes such irresistible melodies as the ‘Alabama Song’ and many dramatic ensembles. The superb cast includes Kurt Streit as the wild lumberjack Jimmy, Christine Rice as his sweetheart Jenny, Anne Sofie von Otter in a welcome return to The Royal Opera as the cunning Leokadja Begbick, and Peter Hoare and Willard W. White as her helpers and fellow-fugitives Fatty and Moses.

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