<<  -- 6 --  Roderic Dunnett    IN FESTIVE MOOD

In his determination to make Thursday 27 July 2006 a truly exciting occasion -- incredibly a 'création mondiale', or world première, of Lalo's Fiesque some 140 years on -- René Koering has gone to the very top. Roberto Alagna will sing the title role; and Angela Gheorghiu, the role of Léonore. The remarkable and poignant opera is based on an early work by Schiller and set in Genoa in 1547. The character Fiesque (Alagna) is part of a plot to overthrow the ruling Doria family, but he is in love with the daughter of his enemy. He thus falls out with the Republican Verrina (sung by Franck Ferrari), who once the revolution succeeds, rather than let the hero succeed to power by public acclamation and marry Julia, kills him.

This belated revival of Fiesque, says the distinguished scholar Hugh MacDonald, with its splendid choruses, well drawn female roles and remarkable Act II dream scene for Fiesque himself, 'will add a work of considerable weight and substance to the French repertoire.'

It will not be the first. Indeed these revivals and dustings-down date back to 1985, when Koering embarked on his first festival. It was Koering who only a few seasons ago was behind the restoration of Offenbach's magnificent opera composed for the Vienna Hofoper, Les Fées du Rhin (1864), soon issued on a particularly splendid triple CD (Accord 472 920-2). The opera -- a work of astonishing lyricism that might be mistaken in places for, say, Lohengrin (and not unnaturally, Das Rheingold too) is a revelation -- and undoubtedly a work that can be set alongside Les contes d'Hoffmann at the apex of the Offenbach canon.

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