Met Live in HD Broadcasts Return to Cardiff

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Good news for opera lovers in the Cardiff area – the Met Live in HD Broadcasts are returning for another season at Cineworld Cardiff. The first broadcast is scheduled to be Mozart’s Don Giovanni (29th of October), starring Mariusz Kwiecien – a former Cardiff Singer of the World finalist.

There are ten broadcasts in all, spread over the coming months, with the likes of Bryn Terfel, Anna Netrebko, Jonas Kaufmann, Natalie Dessay, René Pape and Joyce DiDonato singing for your pleasure.





Tickets cost £15 for adults and £12 for children, seniors and students.

Of course, this wouldn’t be a blog post without a moan, and this time it’s the news that Anna Bolena, starring Anna Netrebko and Ekaterina Gubanova, is not scheduled for broadcast at Cardiff. I’ll dig a little deeper and see if I can clear this up.


The Cineworld Cardiff broadcasts in full…

Don Giovanni – Saturday, 29th of October (6pm)

Siegfried – Saturday, 5th of November (4pm)

Satyagraha – Saturday, 19th of November (6pm)

Rodelinda – Saturday, 3rd of December (5.30pm)

Faust – Saturday, 10th of December (6pm)

The Enchanted Island – Saturday, 21st of January 2012 (6pm)

Götterdämmerung – Saturday, 11th of February (5pm)

Ernani – Saturday, 25th of February (6pm)

Manon – Saturday, 7th of April (5pm)

La Traviata – Saturday, 14th of April (6pm)

Boomerang 'Burgs Are Back - Mariinsky Opera Returns to the WMC

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Feeling like a cad* with a spiffing moustache, my first post-summer post has yours sincerely drawing your attention to the return of the Mariinsky Opera to the WMC next year.

In keeping with its last appearance, St. Petersburg’s finest opera company blasts a bit (or more frankly, a lot) of Wagner, with a full concert performance of Parsifal on the 31st of March. The following day sees Mahler’s Symphony No.8 being given an outing. No word yet about the soloists, but both concerts will be conducted by Valery Gergiev.

Judging by the fact that a libretto will be available from the WMC website in February of next year, it appears that surtitles will once again be absent from the concerts – a significant gripe among concert goers after the previous visit by the Mariinsky.

Tickets are now on sale from the WMC, with prices raging from £18 - £49 for Parsifal, and £15- £39 for the Mahler. The usual concessions are available, including a generous £10 selected seat offer for beings aged 26 and under. For those of you who want your tickets to arrive at the speed of light I’m afraid that you will have to wait until March 2012 for them to arrive.

* WNO blogging will resume shortly.

Haute Couture Papageno

Birds on Street Corners by Ani Stafford-Townsend

A bear has interrupted my summer recess with the following message about WNO's milliner extraordinaire, Ani Stafford-Townsend...





To vote for Birds on Street Corners click here! But hurry up – voting closes on the 18th of August (Thursday) at 6pm UK time!

If you are reading this at a later date the competition will have finished, but you can still visit Ani-Stafford Townsend's website to see other examples of her work.

WNYO - The Sleeper's About to Wake Up

WNO (Image - David Massey)

With less than a week to go preparations are in full swing for The Sleeper, a Welsh National Youth Opera commission, written by poet Michael Symmons Roberts (The Sacrifice), and composer Stephen Deazley. Set in a future where sleep is a thing of the past it promises to be an opera experience with a difference.

The performances, which take place within several venues at The Coal Exchange, are designed to give a Total Opera experience and involve a bit of promenading from the audiences’ point of view – so you’ll have to leave your heels at home, whoever you are.

The Coal Exchange is a stone’s throw from WNO’s home and directions can be found by visiting its website. But if you’re feeling too lazy to click on the last link the satellite photo below will show you how close it is if you’re umming and ahhing over going.




The Sleeper runs from the 15th of July until the 18th of July for eight performances. Tickets cost £11 and £6 (Under 30s) and are only available by ringing WNO on 029 2063 5030. There's a free post-performance talk after the Friday 9pm performance, to attend ring 029 2063 5030 to book your place. Performance length is approximately 75 minutes.

For those of you in the London area the production transfers to Riverside Studios in Hammersmith for two performances on Saturday the 13th, and Sunday the 14th of August. Tickets cost £6 (£4 concs) and can be bought by clicking here, or by ringing the Box Office on 020 8237 1111.

If you’d like to learn more then click here to visit WNO, or if you feel like contributing your own take on sleep you can visit WNO’s digital arm (WNO///3) at The Archive of Sleep.

Librettist Michael Symmons Roberts chats about the opera with glimpses of the set designs and rehearsals in the video beneath these words.

And so it begins...

Following last week’s take on La Traviata, this week sees the unveiling of my, as yet untitled, work / novel / story / yarn in progress. In a shameless effort to attract more readers to this post I will now type Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch, News International, Rebekah Brooks, News of the World, David Cameron, exclusive, the truth, tap dancing monkeys and free bacon butties if your name is Smith.

To read Chapter One click here you phone hacking sexy things. Seriously you can.

Coming soon... an actual post about WNO!

Hot Off the Press

Apart from WNYO’s upcoming The Sleeper things are generally winding down for the summer at WNO (or at least they are for me) so I thought now would be the ideal time to announce a new sideline from Hairman Enterprises®™.

After two years of offering uninformed, vague, quite often embarrassing and wayward criticisms of singers, conductors, orchestras, directors and other audience members I felt it only fair that the tables were turned and I faced the music, which is why I am announcing the creation of two ugly sister blogs to the one you are currently reading. Collected under the titles Hairman Writes a “Proper” Story and Hairman Does a Bit of Poetry they’ll subject readers to examples of the finest writing money can’t buy, because no-one will publish them.

Hairman Writes a "Proper" Story will be published once every two weeks, taking in a chapter of Hairman’s new (circa five months) work in progress, a story with no title but a “fluid” plotline.

Hairman Does a Bit of Poetry will also be published once every two weeks, taking in Hairman’s stab at poetry – but with a slight difference. Shelving odes to hair curlers Hairman will re-imagine (and update) famous, and not so famous, opera characters. He might even take requests, but as this is poetry it could get a bit downbeat.

For those not too taken with swearing Hairman does drop the odd **** and ******* here and there in his writing. And no, his characters aren’t representative of his outlook on life.

Your reading shall begin with...

WNO's Le Nozze di Figaro Available on S4/Clic

Rosemary Joshua (Susanna) and David Soar in the 2009 production - photo

In the build-up to Cardiff Singer I rather irritatingly missed S4C broadcasting WNO’s 2009 Le Nozze di Figaro starring David Soar, Rosemary Joshua, Rebecca Evans and Jacques Imbrailo. To make matters worse I even managed to miss the repeat broadcasts, and the behind the scenes documentary. Fortunately S4/Clic have got the whole caboodle to watch, although it will vamoose in twenty days or so. Click here for a crazy day and here for the documentary.

English and Welsh subtitles are available, and while the streaming quality isn't up to BBC iPlayer standards it's watchable enough. Although, just like the iPlayer, I'm afraid it's only available to view in the UK. Lluís Pasqual's inventive, if uneven, production returns to the WMC stage early next year with Soar and Evans reprising their roles and Elizabeth Watts (Susanna) and Dario Solari (Count Almaviva) joining the cast.