"If you let the crisis into your heart, you risk becoming the crisis," said Kasper Holten. So you don't. Instead, you grab fate by the throat and you concentrate on NEW WORK and COMMISSIONING.
There may be no shortage of Toscas and Traviatas ahead as well, but the single most important thing will be to focus on the new. Embracing the fact that they now have direct control over the Linbury Studio as well as the main stage (I'd feared it might be calamitous to take away the Linbury's own planners - but possibly not), Tony and Kasper are plunging headlong into what we can only call the vision thing.
There's risk. My goodness, there's risk. How do you convince audiences that this is the way forward, especially in such financially straitened times? What's important, says Kasper (I'm paraphrasing, but this was the gist) is not to fail to take risks - because if you don't push the boat out, if you don't encourage new creations and you don't keep the art form vital and living, then what is subsidy for anyway? He wants these new works to become the source of excitement for the audience. He wants them to be the hottest tickets in town. It won't happen overnight, he acknowledges - but the crucial thing is to dare to do it.There's inspiration. There's collaboration - notably with Music Theatre Wales and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the latter not least to encourage improvement in the art of libretto writing. And with Opera North and Aldeburgh Music, there's a project to commission first operas from emerging composers. There will be new pieces from key British figures - notably Tom Ades for the main stage - but many more, including Luke Bedford and the extraordinary sound artist Matthew Herbert in the Linbury.
Verdict? I think it's completely amazing and wonderful. If this great Dane and the inspirational Tony Pappano can together bring fresh air sweeping into the Royal Opera House, then for goodness' sake let's open the gates, let it in, bring it on and cheer for a bit of risk and creativity at last, right at the top of the British musical establishment.
At the very least, the ROH might be a good setting for the next series of Borgen.
Incidentally, I have recently written an in-depth feature about Tony Pappano and it is the cover story in the February issue of Opera News from New York. It's not flagged up online yet, but subscribers seem to have their copies already, so do please get hold of one and have a read (here's the site).
Here's the whole press release from the ROH so you can see exactly what they're doing.
PRESS
RELEASE
10
JANUARY 2013
NEW OPERA AT THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE
NEW OPERA AT THE ROYAL OPERA HOUSE
The Royal Opera’s artistic
directors, Antonio Pappano, Music
Director, and Kasper Holten,
Director of Opera, today outlined their artistic plans for new operas to be
presented at the Royal Opera House from 2013 to 2020. More than 15 new operas
will be presented, both on the main stage and in the Linbury Studio Theatre.
Four composers will also be given an unprecedented challenge to work on an epic
operatic event for 2020.
Pappano and Holten talked of The
Royal Opera’s plans to extend the established tradition of commissioning
British composers, and also include work by leading international artists such
as Luca Francesconi, Kaija Saariaho, Georg Friedrich Haas and Unsuk Chin. The aim is to continue
relationships with a number of the companies who have already worked at the
Royal Opera House, as well as to introduce a whole new roster of national and
international co-commissions and collaborations.
More projects will be added to
the plans over the next few years, especially for the Linbury Studio Theatre
from 2015.
Kasper Holten commented ‘New work is not and should not be at the
periphery of our programme, but right at the core of what and who we are. And
this is something we do, not because we must, but because it is something that
we are passionate about. We hope that opera audiences will share our curiosity
and come with us with open minds along this journey. There is not and should
not be a guarantee of success for every single piece, only for innovation and
risk-taking. But we can guarantee that we will put all the forces of The Royal
Opera behind them all, whatever the scale, and whether the new work is aimed at
adults or young people. To have a smaller theatre inside a major opera house is
a rarity, and the combination of the Linbury Studio Theatre and our large stage
gives us a unique platform for developing new work, which will only be
strengthened through national and international partnerships.’
Antonio Pappano added:
‘Our efforts are being focused on working with the composers who really excite
us, both for the Linbury Studio Theatre and for the main stage. We have worked
hard to find the composers we feel have a real flair and passion for opera, and
we are very excited about being able to roll out our vision for new work on all
scales.’
2012/13
Alongside the current revival of
Harrison Birtwistle’s The Minotaur
and the highly anticipated UK
premiere of George Benjamin’s Written on
Skin, which The Royal Opera has co-commissioned for the main stage,
The Royal Opera will produce the UK stage premiere of Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest in a production directed by Ramin Gray. Tim Murray conducts the Britten Sinfonia and the cast which
includes Ida Falk Winland, Stephanie Marshall, Hilary Summers, Paul Curievici, Benedict
Nelson, Simon Wilding
and Alan Ewing, who reprises his
role as Lady Bracknell from the concert performances at the Barbican last year.
The production will be staged in the Linbury Studio Theatre.
2013/14
There will be a number of new
productions created specially for the Linbury Studio Theatre in the 2013/14
Season.
Acclaimed Australian composer Ben Frost adapts Iain Banks’s cult novel The
Wasp Factory in a production that he himself directs. This opera has
been commissioned by Bregenz Festival’s Art of our Times programme, and is a
co-production with the Royal Opera House, Hebbel-am-Ufer, Berlin, Holland
Festival and Cork Midsummer Festival.
For Christmas 2013, Julian Philips is composing a new opera for
family audiences to a libretto by Edward Kemp,
which will be directed by Natalie Abrahami, with
designs by Tom Scutt.
We are working with the British
electronic pioneer, composer and sound artist Matthew
Herbert to make a new piece in 2014 inspired by the Faust story. Running alongside The Royal
Opera’s revival of Gounod’s Faust, Matthew’s production integrates cutting-edge
technology into the fabric of the musical score.
Composer Luke Bedford and Scottish playwright David Harrower will create a companion
piece taking a very different route through the Faust legend. Both works are
for the Linbury Studio Theatre.
The Royal Opera will present the
first UK
performances of renowned Italian composer Luca
Francesconi’s Quartett,
based on the play by Heiner Müller,
which is itself inspired by characters from Les
Liaisons dangereuses. Quartett
had its world premiere at La Scala, Milan, in
2010 and will be shown in a new version in London by The Royal Opera. The Royal Opera’s
new production is co-produced with London Sinfonietta and Opéra de Rouen, and
directed by John Fulljames.
During the 2013/14 Season The
Royal Opera will launch an annual collaboration with Aldeburgh Music and Opera
North to commission first operas from composers who have a flair for
operatic creativity that, with careful nurturing, could develop into the
composition of major operatic works. The project is supported by Arts Council
England as part of a wider programme of work, led by Aldeburgh Music, to
celebrate the legacy of Benjamin Britten. In the first year of the project, we
will commission two operas that will be produced in Aldeburgh, Leeds and the Linbury Studio Theatre in March 2014.
Further commissions will follow in 2015 and 2016.
2014/15
The Royal Opera’s 2014/15 Season
will open with a revival of Mark-Anthony
Turnage’s Anna Nicole in the main auditorium, followed by a new opera in the
Linbury Studio Theatre by Philip Glass, based
on Kafka’s The Trial, co-commissioned with Music
Theatre Wales and Houston Grand Opera.
A new chamber opera by
German/Danish composer Søren Nils Eichberg,
working with librettist Hannah Dübgen, is
commissioned for 2015 in the Linbury Studio Theatre. The opera is a taut
thriller, which asks us to question what we can really
trust – which emotions are real and which are virtual.
2015 – 2020
A new opera for children by Mark-Anthony
Turnage, to be directed by Katie
Mitchell, is scheduled for December 2015, also in the Linbury Studio
Theatre.
The new operas already planned
for this period include an adaptation of Max
Frisch’s play Count Oederland
by Judith Weir, working with
librettist Ben Power. This is a
collaboration with Scottish Opera and Oper Frankfurt, scheduled for performance
in the Linbury Studio Theatre. More new work in the Linbury Studio Theatre
during this period is being developed and will be added to our plans and
announced later.
For the main stage there is a
commission from German composer Georg
Friedrich Haas, based on Jon Fosse’s
novel Morgon og Kveld (Morning and Evening) with libretto by the
author. The Royal Opera will be collaborating with Deutsche Oper Berlin on this
piece, which will open in London in November
2015 and in Berlin
in April 2016.
Thomas Adès’s
next large-scale opera, based on Buñuel’s film The Exterminating Angel, is a commission from
The Royal Opera and a number of international partners including the Salzburg
Festival. The librettist is Tom Cairns,
who also directs. The Exterminating Angel
will be performed at the Royal Opera House in spring 2017.
Another important main stage
commission is currently being negotiated for late spring 2018.
There will be a new main stage
opera from Unsuk Chin, who adapts Alice Through the Looking Glass with
librettist David Henry Hwang for
2018/19. This follows the extraordinary success of Unsuk’s first opera Alice in Wonderland, which has now been
produced around the world.
2020
For the year 2020 The Royal Opera
has challenged four leading composers from different countries in Europe to each create a large-scale new opera for 2020.
The vision is for four distinct operas, each one in part inspired by the
composer’s response to a set of questions developed in collaboration with the
philosopher Slavoj Žižek: ‘What preoccupies us today? How can we today stage ourselves?
What are the collective myths of our present and future?’
Each composer will work
independently of the other teams but in collaboration with The Royal Opera’s
artistic leadership.
The four composers invited at
this stage are Kaija Saariaho (Finland), Mark-Anthony
Turnage (UK), Luca Francesconi (Italy) and Jörg
Widmann (Germany).
All four commissions will have
their premieres on the main stage during 2020.
New
Relationships
From 2013, The Royal Opera is
developing some new relationships to enable an increased engagement with
emerging composers and librettists.
The Royal
Opera will work with the Guildhall School of
Music & Drama in offering a range
of training opportunities for emerging opera-makers including composers,
writers and directors. This new relationship will begin with a conference about
libretto writing to take place at the Guildhall School in
April 2013. Subject to validation, the conference will mark the launch of
a
new Masters Programme in Opera
Making in
association with the Royal Opera House and a new doctoral studentship in opera composition, the culmination of which will be a new
opera for performance in 2016.
Also in 2013 we will be working
with Sound and Music for the first
time to deliver a seminar day on Saturday 16 March enabling emerging composers
to think about writing for opera.
Opera
development
The Royal Opera will continue to
make a significant investment in artists and ideas as we develop works towards
production. There will be an ongoing programme of opera development, including
workshops and readings, some visible for the public, others not, depending on
the needs for each project. Projects currently being developed include some of
the commissions mentioned above, and work by Chris
Mayo, Sasha Siem and Soumik Datta,
as well as by digital artists Kleis&Rønsholdt and Tal Rosner.
The Royal Opera House has invited
composers David Bruce and Elspeth Brooke to be composers in residence
during the 2012/13 Season, with a view to the future development of
participatory work and/or opera for young people.
Partnerships
with UK
opera companies
We are keen to work with as many
partners as possible on new work, enabling it to be seen by as wide an audience
as possible across the UK.
