WOMEN BEHAVING BADLY!
The fascinating subject of Fallen Women is the theme for Welsh National Opera’s Spring Season of operas coming to Milton Keynes Theatre from 11th – 15th March, grown from the new artistic vision of Welsh National Opera’s Artistic Director David Pountney.
The three operas in the season La traviata, Manon Lescaut, and Boulevard Solitude follow the stories of three women whose different paths in life lead them astray. With the subjects of human trafficking, exploitation and a world of glamour and capitalism, the operas cover subjects as modern and relevant today as when the operas were written.
Welsh National Opera’s new production of Puccini’s breakthrough hit and first great opera Manon Lescaut tells the tale of an impressionable young woman who wanted it all and Puccini charts her rapid descent from innocent to criminal with feverish intensity. Director Mariusz Trelinski will bring this tale of obsession and self destruction to life setting this production in the contemporary world. WNO will be the first UK opera company that Mariusz Trelinski will have directed. He also directs the new production of Boulevard Solitude by Hans Werner Henze. The opera is the composer’s 1950’s updating of the Manon Lescaut story in a heady musical cocktail of jazz, 19th century opera and 20th century styles, set in European Society after the war. Working on the same set as Manon Lescaut, Trelinski will highlight the parallels between the two operas, to create a surreal world of decadence and greed. One of the greatest operas of the last century, this is the first time this compelling opera will be performed outside London. Conductor for both Manon Lescaut and Boulevard Solitude will be WNO’s Music Director Lothar Koenigs.
Completing the season’s trilogy is the classic revival of Verdi’s tear jerker and David McVicar’s production of La traviata. With its elegant sets and beautiful music the opera displays an attack on hypocrisy whilst also celebrating compassion, love and self sacrifice. “The hypocrisy lies in permitting the audience the titillation of watching a woman behaving badly for three acts on the condition that she points up the moral by dying miserably in the fourth. The males in the audience in 19th century Paris were not above visiting such women themselves, but they still demanded that their wives and daughters were presented with an elevating moral lesson.” explains David Pountney.
The Welsh National Opera at Milton Keynes Theatre from 11th-15th March
Box Office: 0844 871 7652 or online: www.atgtickets.com/miltonkeynes
More information on the season: www.wno.org.uk/fallenwomen
