Royal Opera House unveils 2008/9 season

Published Thursday 20 March 2008 at 11:25 by Lalayn Baluch

Royal Opera House has announced its 2008/9 season, which includes eight new operatic productions and two new pieces of choreography from Wayne McGregor and Alastair Marriott for the Royal Ballet.

RO music director Antonio Pappano, now in his seventh season with the company, will conduct five productions this year - Don Giovanni, La Fanciulla del West, Les Contes d’Hoffmann, Lulu, La Traviata and Il Barbiere di Siviglia. He will also lead concert performances of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and Verdi’s Requiem.

The company will stage Franceso Cavalli’s La Calisto for the first time, directed by David Alden and led by Sally Matthews. Other new productions include Matilde Di Shabran, Hansel und Gretel, Die Tote Stadt and Der Fliegende Hollander.

Season highlights also feature Britten’s The Beggar’s Opera, which will be staged by the ROH in the Linbury Studio Theatre.

Meanwhile, RB resident choreographer McGregor is to create a new work as part of a triple bill, to run alongside Eugene Ionesco’s The Lesson and Glen Tetley’s Voluntaries.

In another triple bill, Marriott will choreograph his second new piece for the main stage. The dance, which is yet to be named, will be presented alongside Mikhail Fokine’s Les Sylphides and The Firebird.

McGregor will also bring together the RO and the RB for a double production of Dido and Aeneas/Acis and Galatea, with the help of baroque specialist Christopher Hogwood, who will conduct the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

The RB has also announced a new production of Kenneth MacMillan’s Isadora created by Deborah MacMillan, as well as revivals of Michael Corder’s L’Invitation au Voyage, Will Tuckett’s Seven Deadly Sins, Mat Ek’s Carmen and Christopher Wheeldon’s DGV.