This revival of Mark-Anthony Turnage’s opera opens Covent Garden’s new season: a bold choice, given the controversial reception the first run of the piece received. In another bold move, the first night on 11 September open to ROH Students (you’ll need to sign up to become one) with tickets from £1(sic!) to £25.
Royal Opera House, London EC2, 11-24 September.
This astonishing Congolese orchestra, formed in the crucible of one Africa’s most horrific conflicts, represents one of the great stories of hope, talent, hard work and musical joy flowering in the most devastating of situations. And above all, it’s testament to the vision of their conductor Armand Diangienda, to inspire his musicians to real heights of musical quality and intensity. To hear these players perform music including Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in conjunction with the Hallé in Manchester, the BBC Concert Orchestra and others in London and Bristol-based musicians at the Colston Hall, will be one of the events of this – or any other – year.
Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, 11 September then touring.
Beethoven Week
During the 2012-13 season, Andris Nelsons conducted all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies with the City of Birmingham Symphony. Afterwards he and his orchestra were invited to take their cycle to the Beethovenfest that’s held each year in Bonn, the city where the composer was born. That’s quite an honour for any British orchestra, and when they return from Germany they are repeating their performances for the audience in Symphony Hall - a chronological survey across four concerts in just six days.
Symphony Hall Birmingham (0121-345 0600), 16 to 21 September.
William Tell
After the concert performance at this summer’s Edinburgh festival there will be plenty of opportunities to see new stagings of Rossini’s final and grandest opera over the coming ten months. Covent Garden’s production won’t be premiered until June next year, but Welsh National Opera’s version launches its autumn season. Updated to the 1820s, the time of the opera’s composition, it’s directed by David Pountney and conducted by Carlo Rizzi, with David Kempster as the Swiss nationalist hero and Clive Bayley as Gesler, governor of the occupying Austrians.
Millennium Centre, Cardiff (029 2063 6464), 12 September to 4 October; New Theatre, Oxford (0844 871 3020), 18 October; Venue Cymru, Llandudno (01492 872000), 25 October; Hippodrome, Bristol (0844 671 3012), 15 November; Hippodrome, Birmingham (0844 338 5000), 22 November; Mayflower, Southampton (02380 711811), 29 November.
The Southbank Centre’s big autumn spectacular is a percussion extravaganza centred on its current artist-in-residence, Colin Currie, and showcasing pieces specially composed for the phenomenal instrumentalist, some of them specially commissioned for the festival. There are world premieres of works by Anna Clyne, Steve Reich and James MacMillan, and a UK premiere from Louis Andriessen, as well as a concert dedicated to the memory of composer Steve Martland.
Southbank Centre, London (0845 875 0073), 17 September, 5 & 12 October, 11 & 12 November, 11 December.
Toshio Hosokawa and Gustav Mahler unite under the hand of conductor Robin Ticciati in this concert, which includes the world premiere of Hosokawa’s Harp Concerto performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and harpist Naoko Yoshino. Meanwhile, Karen Cargill is the soloist in what should be a radiant performance of Mahler’s Fourth.
Edinburgh Usher Hall, 9 October; Glasgow City Halls, 10 October, (sco.org.uk).
Music Theatre Wales and Philip Glass go back a long way - one of the company’s earliest successes was the UK premiere of Glass’s The Fall of the House of Usher in 1989, while four years ago it introduced his In the Penal Colony here. Now Glass has composed his latest opera especially for MTW - the adaptation of Kafka’s The Trial has a libretto by playwright Christopher Hampton, one of his regular collaborators. Michael McCarthy directs the staging, and Michael Rafferty conducts.
Linbury Studio, London (020-7304 4000), 10-18 October, then touring until 10 November.
A two-evening residency from Spira Mirabilis, the phenomenal unconducted orchestra whose performances are among the most thrilling large-ensemble concerts you can hear. They play Britten’s Nocturne and a new commission from Colin Matthews.
Snape Maltings Concert Hall, Aldeburgh, 24 & 26 October.
Plácido Domingo: I Due Foscari
Plácido Domingo returns to the Royal Opera House to sing Verdi’s early, rarely staged operatic tragedy I Due Foscari. Domingo’s performance in the baritone role of the benighted patriarch Francesco Foscari is one of autumn’s hottest tickets.
Royal Opera House, London, 14 October - 2 November.
Mariinsky Opera on Tour
Though its standards may not be as reliably high as they used to be, there are still few opera companies in the world that can match the Mariinsky Opera for the strength in depth of its casting. Such resources mean that in an eight-day, three-city tour of the UK it can give concert performances of Prokofiev’s Betrothal in a Monastery, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and the UK premiere of Rodion Shchedrin’s The Left-Hander, as well as a full staged Ring cycle; Valery Gergiev, of course, conducts it all.
Betrothal in a Monastery: Millennium Centre, Cardiff (029-2063 6464), 2 November; Boris Godunov and Levsha: Barbican, London (020-7638 8891), 3 & 4 November; The Ring: Hippodrome, Birmingham (0844 338 5000), 5-9 November
