On a high note

A round-up of the best productions touring the UK this year

Opera, the grande dame of the arts, is showing her populist side. Modern technology has enabled opera houses all over the world to reach a new, younger and less affluent public. In London, audiences stretch out on the cobbles of the Covent Garden piazza to enjoy the big-screen relay from the adjoining Royal Opera House (ROH). And performances filmed on HD are regularly transmitted to selected cinemas around the world.

The same 19th century grand operas do tend to feature heavily in the schedules, but James Inverne, editor of Gramophone, denies that the repertoire is stagnant. "There's a lot of exploration going on, even in the major houses at the moment," he says.

Nor does the cliché that an opera singer is all voice and no acting talent ring true these days. Inverne is very excited about the current crop of singers who've yet to achieve widespread fame. He singles out one artist who can be seen on a variety of stages during the first half of 2009. "Gerald Finley is a Canadian bass-baritone who is a fantastic actor as well as a wonderfully poised singer. He was recently nominated for three Gramophone awards, dead-heating with himself in one category."

The international nature of opera and the nomadic life of the opera singer are reflected in Finley's 2009 programme. At Covent Garden from January 27 to February 17, he will sing the role of Frank/Fritz in a rare staging of Korngold's opera Die tote Stadt. He then makes the short journey from Covent Garden to English National Opera (ENO) where, from February 25, he will be singing the role of Robert Oppenheimer in the first London production of Doctor Atomic by John Adams. Finley remains at the Coliseum to play Bulstrode in ENO's new production of Britten's Peter Grimes, which opens on May 9.

Inverne also points to two young stars from Latin America: the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazon and the Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Florez. Florez will sing Count Almaviva at Covent Garden in a revival of a 2005 production of The Barber of Seville, while Villazon will give a concert recital at the RoH on June 24. The in-demand Villazon can also be seen in New York, at the Met. His engagements include the role of Edgardo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, from March 31 to April 22, and he joins Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu and Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel in the same composer's more light-hearted L'Elisir d'Amore, also in April.

Terfel is expected at Covent Garden to play the title role in The Flying Dutchman in a new production of the Wagner opera by Tim Albery, which will run from late February and into March. And he will return to the ROH at the end of the season to sing Scarpia in Tosca with Deborah Voigt.

Russian soprano Anna Netrebko has no shortage of admirers. At Covent Garden from early March she will play Giulietta in a revival of the 1984 production of I Capuleti e I Montecchi, Bellini's take on Romeo and Juliet. In New York in January she will be sharing the role of Mimi in La Bohème with Maija Kovalevska.

Superstar soprano Renée Fleming is also active on both sides of the Atlantic. For the Met, she will sing the title role in Dvorak's Rusalka in March and for the ROH in June she will sing Violetta in a revival of Richard Eyre's production of Verdi's La Traviata.

Other highlights from the ROH programme include an intriguing double bill in April of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas and Handel's Acis and Galatea, with ENO favourite Sarah Connolly making her Covent Garden debut as Dido. Finally,  Roberto Alagna, arguably the best-known tenor of the post Domingo and Pavarotti generation, appears at Covent Garden in April to sing Manrico in Il Trovatore.

Highlights of ENO's season include the welcome return of veteran director Jonathan Miller. In February he turns his attention to Puccini's La Bohème, which he is setting in a 1930s Paris blighted by the Depression. A similarly contentious personality from the theatre is Katie Mitchell, whose multi-media stage pieces seen recently at the National Theatre have divided the critics. For ENO she is devising a piece of theatre built around Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, which will open at the Young Vic on April 15. Look out, too, for Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami, who has chosen to make his opera debut with Cosi fan tutte, opening on May 25.

Opera outside London is in an equally healthy state, to judge by the packed schedules of Scottish Opera and Welsh National Opera, which both tour extensively from their respective bases in Glasgow and Cardiff. Scottish Opera's spring into summer programme consists of La Traviata, Manon and Cosi fan tutte, while WNO offers L'Elisir d'Amore, The Marriage of Figaro, Salome by Richard Strauss, Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades and concert performances of Mithridates, King of Pontus.

In Leeds, Opera North promises American political satire. The company has already put on the Gershwins' 1931 musical Of Thee I Sing, and, on January 29, follows it up with the sequel Let Them Eat Cake, which, 75 years after opening on Broadway, at last makes its British debut. The theme of satire is maintained with Skin Deep, a piece that takes a sardonic look at the cosmetic surgery industry with music by David Sawer and a libretto by Armando Iannucci.

Weather permitting, summer festival opera-going can be enchanting. For its 75th season, running from May 21 until August 30, Glyndebourne will no doubt be attracting the crowds. There are welcome returns for Giulio Cesare, L'Elisir d'Amore and Tristan and Isolde, as well as new productions of Verdi's Falstaff, Purcell's The Fairy Queen and Dvorak's Rusalka, with which acclaimed theatre director Melly Still makes her opera debut.

If you prefer rural Oxfordshire to the charms of bucolic Sussex, then a visit to Garsington Opera, Garsington Manor, might be your thing. The short season runs for a month from the beginning of June with a programme of Fidelio, Beethoven's only opera, Rossini's La Cenerentola and Martinu's Mirandolina.

Finally, for Londoners who prefer to stay at home to enjoy open-air opera, there's the summer season in Holland Park. Running from June 2 until August 15, the programme consists of such reliable favourites as Janacek's Katya Kabanova.

Al Senter