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EDITORIAL Phone +44 (0)20 7333 1701 Email opera.now@markallengroup.com Editor-in-Chief Ashutosh Khandekar Assistant Editor Josephine Miles Associate Editor Helena Matheopoulos Contributing Editors Francis Muzzu, Tom Sutcliffe Robert Thicknesse (UK), Francis Carlin (France), James Imam (Italy), Karyl Charna Lynn (USA), Andrew Mellor (Scandinavia), Ken Smith (Far East) Design Louise Wood ADVERTISING Phone +44 (0)20 7333 1716 Title Manager Craig Dacey, craig.dacey@markallengroup.com Group Sales Manager Alisdair Ashman Advertising Production Larry Oakes, Leandro Linares, +44 (0)20 7501 6665, leandro.linares@markallengroup.com SUBSCRIPTIONS AND BACK ISSUES Phone UK 0800 137201 Overseas +44(0)1722 716997 Email subscriptions@markallengroup.com Subscriptions Manager Bethany Foy UK Subscription Rate £70 PUBLISHING Phone +44(0)20 7738 5454 Publishing Director Owen Mortimer Director of Marketing & Digital Strategy Luca Da Re Marketing Manager John Barnett Group Institutional Sales Manager Jas Atwal Production Director Richard Hamshere Circulation Director Sally Boettcher Managing Director Paul Geoghegan Chief Executive O€ cer Ben Allen Chairman Mark Allen www.markallengroup.com OperaNow, ISSN 0958-501X, (USPS 9346) is published monthly by MA Music, Leisure & Travel Ltd, St Jude’s Church, Dulwich Road, London SE24 0PB, United Kingdom. The US annual subscription price is $92. Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named WN Shipping USA, 156-15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA. Periodicals postage paid at Jamaica NY 11431. US Postmaster: Send address changes to Opera Now, WN Shipping USA, 156-15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA. Subscription records are maintained at MA Music, Leisure & Travel Ltd, Unit A, Buildings 1-5 Dinton Business Park, Catherine Ford Road, Dinton, Salisbury, Wiltshire SP3 5HZ. Air Business Ltd is acting as our mailing agent. © MA Music, Leisure and Travel Ltd, 2020. All rights reserved. No part of Opera Now may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission of the publishing director. The views expressed do not necessarily represent those of the editor. The presence of advertisements in Opera Now implies no endorsement of the products or services offered. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of statements in this magazine but we cannot accept responsibility for errors or omissions, or for matters arising from clerical or printers’ errors, or an advertiser not completing their contract. We have made every effort to secure permission to use copyright material. Where material has been used inadvertently or we have been unable to trace the copyright owner, acknowledgement will be made in a future issue. Please read our privacy policy by visiting http://privacypolicy. markallengroup.com. This will explain how we process, use and safeguard your data. Printed in the UK by Pensord, Pontllanfraith, Blackwood, NP12 2YA Newstrade distribution by Seymour 020 7429 4000
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The age of the mammals
It’s striking how the large, lumbering opera companies – the dinosaurs of the opera if you will – are finding the ravages of COVID-19 especially di¤ cult to contend with. Although the Met is still streaming from its archive, it won’t be adding any new productions to its rich and prolific performance history until the start of 2021 at the very earliest. In London, the Royal Opera House is even more pessimistic about the outlook for 2020/21. The di¤ culties of social distancing in a 19th-century theatre for an aging audience demographic have all but scuppered the chances of mainstage opera returning to Covent Garden until well into 2021. What’s more, the ROH has terminated nearly all of its freelance contracts, from backstage and administrative staff to musicians and singers, which means that it’s unlikely to be able to set up its operations at short notice, even if by some miracle a vaccine suddenly comes along and saves the world. We are, operatically speaking, living in the age of mammals. It’s the smaller, quicker, creative thinkers of the opera world who are likely to pick themselves up and dust themselves down most quickly in a post-COVID age. The legacy of the pandemic is that opera companies have had to use ingenuity and lateral thinking in order to keep their audiences on side and engaged with their work. New skills have emerged: videography, digital set design, the art of streaming opera not in huge indigestible chunks, but in beautifully curated morsels. Audiences have, ironically, had unprecedented access to opera singers through lockdown. Once revered as demigods and goddesses, the likes of Jonas Kaufmann and Diana Damrau now appear to us in their jeans, in a domestic setting. Kitchen cabinets, flowery duvets and well-tended flowerbeds have become a familiar backdrop for singing, in place of plush velvet and gilded chandeliers. The demystification of opera is almost complete. It’s hard to know what to feel about the possibility of a return to the dark, crowded grandeur of a traditional opera house. I long to do it. But after everything we’ve been through, not least due to the financial hardship that many opera houses are facing, I’m not sure that grand opera can ever really return in all its glory. The future for opera may well be small but beautifully formed.
Ashutosh Khandekar
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Opera Now captures the drama, colour and vitality of one of the most powerful of all the performing arts. In our print and digital issues, we showcase the creative spirit of opera, both on stage and behind the scenes, with profiles of opera companies, singers, directors and designers. Our in-depth features reflect how diverse cultural elements have influenced opera, including travel, history, literature, art, architecture, politics and philosophy. Our lively reviews and opinion pages are a platform for writers and critics drawn from all over the world. Our aim is to inspire our opera-loving readers to broaden their knowledge and deepen their passion for this fascinating and stimulating artform.
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