Published: 8 September, 2011
by SEBASTIAN TAYLOR

NEW opera seasons get under way at the English National Opera and Royal Opera House over the coming week.

The new Royal Opera season opens on Monday with a Puccini hat-trick conducted by music director Antonio Pappano.

The composer’s Il Trittico is being performed in full, with new Richard Jones productions of Il Tabarro and Suor Angelica being added to his existing popular production of Gianni Schicchi.

The three contrasting stories cover the gamut ranging from jealousy, murder and suicide to romance, exuberance and sheer transcendent joy.

Other Covent Garden productions this autumn include revivals of a Gounod’s Faust; the Richard Eyre’s traditional-style Traviata; Tim Albury’s powerful staging of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman; Bellini’s La Sonnambula; and Wagner’s The Mastersingers of Nuremberg.

The new English National Opera season opens next Thursday with a revival of Jonathan Miller’s affectionately comic take on Donizetti’s rural romance, The Elixir of Love.

Miller’s version, updated to a 1950s American diner, won plaudits at its debut last year.

Returning for the revival are Sarah Tynan as the adorable Marilyn Monroe-styled Adina and Andrew Shore as the slick love-potion salesman.

New to the cast are the two GIs vying for Adina’s attention, Ben Johnson as the shy mechanic and Benedict Nelson as the boisterous officer.

Other ENO offerings this autumn include a new production of Polish composer Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s 1968 opera The Passenger about meetings between a former Auschwitz guard and a former Auschwitz prisoner.

New ENO productions are Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro directed by actress Fiona Shaw;  Rameau’s Castor and Pollox, the crowning achievement of French baroque opera; and Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. A revival of Tosca is the ENO’s festive season crowd-puller.

• www.roh.org.uk; www.eno.org