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Shimmer, Sizzle and Shock
RODERIC DUNNETT is enthralled
by Alban Berg's 'Lulu',
currently on tour with Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera is currently touring three operas, before their much-anticipated Lohengrin takes off in the early summer: a deeply affecting production of The Cunning Little Vixen, directed by their newly embarked Artistic Director, David Pountney; a pretty traditional staging of Madam Butterfly; and Alban Berg's Lulu, all bonded together under the collective label 'Free Spirits': each features a woman whose life is brutally snuffed out while groping her way in a world determined to stifle and quash her independent strivings.
Welsh National's touring area, which includes Birmingham and Oxford, continues at the Mayflower Theatre, Southampton (today, 23 March); The Milton Keynes Theatre (26-30 March), where Lulu is on Tuesday 26; and the Theatre Royal, Plymouth (2- 6 April; Lulu is staged there on Tuesday 2 April 2013). Their autumn tour will include not just Tosca, but Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux -- a Donizetti Tudor triptych excitingly brought together by Pountney as a composite, like (say) Shakespeare's history plays.
For hardened romantics, the one not to miss is Lulu...
Copyright © 23 March 2013
Roderic Dunnett,
Coventry UK
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