Southbank Centre Opera Events

Chelsea Opera Group

peter.mallon

La forza del destino-Verdi St Petersburg Version

La forza del destino was first heard 150 years ago in St Petersburg, its episodic structure and important chorus part having a lasting influence on Russian opera.

This is the original version, differing from the more familar revision in its shorter overture, an additional tenor aria, and a finale of bitter catastrophe rather than religious consolation.

Start Date:

Sunday 25 March 2012 - 18:00

End Date:

Sunday 25 March 2012

Ticket Prices:

£29 £28 £23 £21 £12.50 Premium £33

Concession/Group Prices:

50% off (limited availability)

Performer(s):

Chelsea Opera Group Orchestra
Chelsea Opera Group Chorus
Robin Newton conductor
Gweneth-Ann Jeffers Leonora
Peter Auty Alvaro
Donald Maxwell Melitone

Repertoire:

Giuseppe Verdi: La forza del destino - opera in 3 acts
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Facility Description:

Queen Elizabeth Hall

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Pass The Spoon

peter.mallon

A Sort-of-Opera by David Fennessy, David Shrigley and Nicholas Bone

What can we say about Pass the Spoon, well...

It's a show with actors, music and food.
It's a bit like an opera, but with vegetables and fruit.
It's about cooking.
It's possibly the only show you'll see this year featuring a dung beetle.
Oh, and someone gets eaten. Did we mention that?

Alongside David Shrigley's first major retrospective Brain Activity at Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre presents the London premiere of Pass the Spoon. Having debuted with three shows at Glasgow's Tramway in November to rave reviews, this spectacular new performance by Edinburgh based theatre production company, Magnetic North, is created by Shrigley with award-winning composer David Fennessy and acclaimed director Nicholas Bone, and features live music played by the Red Note Ensemble.

Pass the Spoon is supported by Creative Scotland with thanks to PRS for Music Foundation and Hope Scott Trust.

'The most fun I've ever had at the opera.' **** (The Independent)

'Daft and instantly lovable.' **** (The Guardian)

'The most sublimely silly event to grace a Scottish stage in many years.' **** (The Scotsman)

Follow @davidshrigley on Twitter

Start Date:

Saturday 5 May 2012 - 19:30

End Date:

Sunday 6 May 2012

Ticket Prices:

£15 £12 £10

Concession/Group Prices:

50% off (limited availability)

Facility Description:

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Images

London Philharmonic Orchestra

peter.mallon

Cabaret with Kurt Weill

Kurt Weill never set out to write a masterpiece - instead to provoke and entertain normal people with ready, urgent music that made a relevant political point.

The Threepenny Opera, though, has proved a longstanding touchstone. A surrealistic and riotous juxtaposition of 18th-century ballad texts, European swing and dance music, plus American jazz, all conceived on an operatic scale proved as nourishing as it did provocative.

Weill's is one of those rare seminal creations that remains ever-relevant, seen here in a production led by Ted Huffman and Vladimir Jurowski, and featuring 'post-modern cabaret diva' Meow Meow - herself a phenomenon in human form who has to be seen to believed.

Free pre-concert event, 9.45pm until 10.15pm on The Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival Hall
Foyle Future Firsts present Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel - a chance to hear Weill and Brecht's first collaboration.

Free post-concert event on The Clore Ballroom at Royal Festival Hall

Start Date:

Saturday 2 March 2013 - 19:30

End Date:

Saturday 2 March 2013

Ticket Prices:

£39 £33 £27 £27 £16 £12 £9 Premium £65

Concession/Group Prices:

50% off (limited availability)

Performer(s):

London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski conductor
Mark Padmore Macheath `Mack the Knife'
Sir John Tomlinson Mr Peachum
Dame Felicity Palmer Mrs Peachum
Allison Bell Polly Peachum
Nicholas Folwell Jackie `Tiger' Brown
Gabriela Istoc Lucy Brown
Meow Meow Jenny
Otto Sander narrator
Ted Huffman director

Repertoire:

Kurt Weill: The Threepenny Opera
(performed in German with English surtitles)
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Facility Description:

Royal Festival Hall

Images

London Philharmonic Orchestra

Jurowski conducts Rachmaninov

Jurowski conducts Rachmaninov's ecstatic choral masterpiece, 'The Bells'.

After a feast of bell-themed works by Denisov, Miaskovsky and Shchedrin comes Rachmaninov's creative response to his own fascination with the sound of bells. Passionate and rapturous music is tenderly weaved throughout by the soloists and charged by full-throttle chorus in Rachmaninov's bell-strewn vision of human life.

Like a seductive mist, the sound of bells casts a long, beautiful spell over orchestra and voices in this concert. Rachmaninov believed they directly conveyed emotional human truths, depicting the silvery brightness of birth, the golden browns of marriage, the dark stillness of death and the serenity of peace.

Free post-concert event on The Clore Ballroom Floor at Royal Festival Hall - artists involved in the performance will discuss the evening's programme.

Start Date:

Saturday 29 September 2012 - 19:30

End Date:

Saturday 29 September 2012

Ticket Prices:

£39 £33 £27 £21 £16 £12 £9 Premium £65

Concession/Group Prices:

50% off (limited availability)

Performer(s):

London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski conductor
Tatiana Monogarova soprano
Sergei Skorokhodov tenor
Vladimir Chernov baritone
London Philharmonic Choir
London Symphony Chorus

Repertoire:

Edison Denisov: Bells in the fog
Nicolay Yakovlevich Myaskovsky: Silentium, Op.9
Interval
Rodion Shchedrin: Concerto No.2 for orchestra (The Chimes)
Sergey Rachmaninov: The Bells

Facility Description:

Royal Festival Hall

Images

London Philharmonic Orchestra

peter.mallon

Operatic Drama with Jurowski

An evening of operatic drama with Vladimir Jurowski.

Entranced and inspired by Oscar Wilde's dark, death-ridden play, Alexander Zemlinsky conjured up his most colourful orchestral canvas in the one-act opera A Florentine Tragedy.

Puccini claimed Zemlinsky's most overtly Straussian score was 'a rival to Salome but more human - more real.' The narrative of infidelity and rapprochement wasn't lost on Zemlinsky's former lover Alma Schindler, who was outraged when she saw the Vienna premiere.

Zemlinsky might not have found that ever-elusive fame and fortune with his opera, but he poured his all into it, revealing more about the troublesome Alma than any of her former lovers would dare.

Free pre-concert talk, 6.15pm until 6.45pm, Royal Festival Hall
A discussion on the music of Zemlinsky with David Trendell, College Organist and Senior Lecturer in Music at King's College London.

Start Date:

Wednesday 26 September 2012 - 19:30

End Date:

Wednesday 26 September 2012

Ticket Prices:

£39 £33 £27 £21 £16 £12 £9 Premium £65

Concession/Group Prices:

50% off (limited availability)

Performer(s):

London Philharmonic Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski conductor
Heike Wessels mezzo-soprano, Bianca, Simone's wife
Sergei Skorokhodov tenor, Guido Bardi, Prince of Florence
Albert Dohmen baritone, Simone, a merchant

Repertoire:

Richard Strauss: Excerpts from Die Frau ohne Schatten
Interval
Alexander Von Zemlinsky: Florentine Tragedy - opera in 1 act
(performed in German with English surtitles)

Facility Description:

Royal Festival Hall

Images

Ramin - In Concert

p.goudal

Leading West End artist Ramin Karimloo performs a varied programme with a live band of stunning new songs from his album, alongside some much loved West End favourites including Music of the Night from The Phantom of the Opera,'Til I Hear You Sing from Love Never Dies, Some Enchanted Evening from South Pacific and Bring Him Home from Les Misérables.

Ramin Karimloo received global acclaim starring in The Phantom of the Opera 25th anniversary concert, performed at the Royal Albert Hall and broadcast around the world. He is one of Sony's most exciting new signings, with a much anticipated new album released in February 2012.

Start Date:

Tuesday 1 May 2012 - 19:30

End Date:

Tuesday 1 May 2012

Ticket Prices:

£45 £39.50 £29.50 £23.50 £17.50 £14.50

Concession/Group Prices:

50% off (limited availability)

Facility Description:

Royal Festival Hall

Images

Jessye Norman sings American Masters

Hear some of the greatest songs in the American musical theatre songbook performed in a rare Royal Festival Hall performance by Jessye Norman.

Described by The New York Times as possessing 'an amazing voice, a catalogue of all that is virtuous in singing', Norman treats the audience to classics such as 'Somewhere' by Leonard Bernstein, 'You'll Never Walk Alone' by Rodgers and Hammerstein and 'Mack the Knife' by Weill and Brecht.

Norman is a singer whose rich history of music making spans opera, recitals performances, contemporary music and jazz.

In February of 2006, she became only the fourth opera/classical music singer in the 48-year history of the Grammy Awards to be presented The Lifetime Achievement Award for Classical Music.

'The immensity of her voice struck like a thunderbolt. It was like an eruption of primal power.' (The Jerusalem Post)

Start Date:

Monday 21 May 2012 - 19:30

End Date:

Monday 21 May 2012

Ticket Prices:

£55 £40 £32 £25 £20 £15 £12

Performer(s):

Jessye Norman soprano
Mark Markham accompanist

Repertoire:

Programme includes:
Traditional: His eye is on the sparrow
Traditional: Lord I couldn't hear nobody pray
Duke Ellington: It don't mean a thing
Walter Donaldson: My baby just cares for me
Kurt Weill: The Ballad of Mack the Knife (from The Threepenny Opera)
Duke Ellington: Don't get much around any more
George Gershwin: Summertime from Porgy and Bess
Thelonius Monk: Blue Monk

Facility Description:

Royal Festival Hall

Images

The Olympics in Opera, Venice Baroque Orchestra

m.critcher

This performance of the complete opera L'Olimpiade in concert features arias by Caldara, Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Leo, Galuppi, Perez, Hasse, Traetta, Jommelli, Piccinni, Gassman, Myslivecek, Cherubini, Cimarosa and Paisiello.

Soon after 1733, when the great Roman poet Pietro Metastasio witnessed the premiere of his libretto L'Olimpiade, a procession of more than 50 composers began to set to music this tale of friendship, loyalty and passion. In the course of the 18th century, theatres across Europe commissioned operas from the Olympian composers of the day, and performances were acclaimed in the royal courts and public opera houses from Rome to Moscow, London and Prague.

Start Date:

Monday 28 May 2012 - 19:30

End Date:

Monday 28 May 2012

Ticket Prices:

£35 £27 £19 £12 £6

Concession/Group Prices:

50% off (limited availability)

Performer(s):

Venice Baroque Orchestra
Andrea Marcon conductor
Karina Gauvin soprano
Ruth Rosique soprano
Romina Basso mezzo-soprano
Anna Bonitatibus mezzo-soprano
Carlo Allemano tenor
Nicholas Spanos countertenor

Repertoire:

Metastasio: L'Olimpiade presented as a pasticcio with music by Caldara, Vivaldi, Pergolesi, Leo, Galuppi, Perez, Hasse, Traetta, Jommelli, Piccinni, Gassman, Myslivecek, Cherubini, Cimarosa & Paisiello
Interval

Facility Description:

Queen Elizabeth Hall

Chelsea Opera Group

peter.mallon

Maria Padilla - Donizetti

One of the most unfairly neglected of Donizetti's mature operas, Maria Padilla is both brilliant and dramatically powerful.

Start Date:

Sunday 27 May 2012 - 19:00

End Date:

Sunday 27 May 2012

Ticket Prices:

£29.00 £28.00 £23.00 £21.00 £12.50 Premium seats £33.00

Concession/Group Prices:

50% off (limited availability)

Performer(s):

Nelly Miricioiu soprano

Repertoire:

Gaetano Donizetti: Maria Padilla - opera in 3 acts
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Facility Description:

Queen Elizabeth Hall