 |
||
|
|
|
By Vivien Schweitzer
08 Nov 2006
A year after it opened, Valencia's Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia has begun its first season, which kicked off on October 25 with Beethoven's Fidelio.
Zubin Mehta conducted the Palau's new orchestra — which met for the first time only in September — in its first opera performance; the starry cast in Pier' Alli's traditional staging included Waltraud Meier in the title role, Matti Salminen as Rocco, Juha Uusitalo as Don Pizarro and Peter Seiffert as Florestan.
Palau superintendent Helga Schmidt — who previously served as artistic director of the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden) in London — has secured the services of Lorin Maazel as music director and Zubin Mehta as director of the annual Festival del Mediterráneo, plus a number of notable soloists for the 2006-07 season.
 |
|
| The Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, designed by Santiago Calatrava, in Valencia. |
Zubin Mehta will conduct the Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana in concerts featuring Mahler's Symphony No. 2 and Sibelius's Violin Concerto with Leonidas Kavakos as soloist. Keri-Lynn Wilson will direct the orchestra in opera excerpts sung by the husband-and-wife team of mezzo Olga Borodina and bass Ildar Abdrazakov.
Maxim Shostakovich will conduct the orchestra in his father's Symphony No. 5 and the Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Orchestra.
The operatic lineup includes La Bohème, conducted by New York Philharmonic Associate Conductor Xian Zhang and staged by Pierre Audi; a new Don Giovanni staged by Jonathan Miller and conducted by Lorin Maazel with Erwin Schrott in the title role and Frittoli as Donna Anna; Philip Glass's La Belle et la Bête, based on Jean Cocteau's film, in a staging from the National Theater of Prague; Ruperto Chapi's zarzuela opera La Bruja; Francesca Zambello's staging of Cyrano de Bergerac, led by Marco Armiliato, with Plácido Domingo in the title role and Sondra Radvanovsky as Roxanne; Wagner's Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, staged by the Barcelona theater troupe La Fura dels Baus; and a new production of Simon Boccanegra directed by Lluís Pasqual and conducted by Maazel.
Writing in the International Herald Tribune after the opening of the new season, George Loomis opined that the Palau, the riverside opera house/concert hall designed by Santiago Calatrava as the final building in his Ciutat de les Arts i las Ciencias complex (which also includes an aquarium and a science museum), "can call to mind a surrealistic ocean liner or even a gargantuan prehistoric creature cast in stone."
"Strolling along one of the outdoor balconies on a balmy night almost suggests being onboard a ship," he adds, "and nautical illusions continue with the deep blue ceramic walls and cream color tiers of seats, like the decks of a ship, inside the 1,700-seat theater for opera." The theater has quite satisfactory acoustics as well, according to several reports.
 |
|
| The main auditorium and the exterior of the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia, designed by Santiago Calatrava, in Valencia.
|
Send questions and comments to the Webmaster
Copyright © 2010 Playbill, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
