Past Production Reviews
3Kyungho Kim’s gleaming tenor provided vocal thrills, and he got the Duke’s self-absorption down pat.
The stage premiere of the Národní divadlo’s powerful new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto directed by Barbora Horáková Joly was a gala night at the opera. The splendor of the newly restored State Opera, to say nothing of the audience’s response and an entire flower shop’s stock delivered on stage during the curtain calls, added to the luster of the evening. And for all the talk about the death of fashion post-COVID-19, the younger people in the audience didn’t get the memo.
Mozart enjoyed great success in Prague. Don Giovanni was commissioned after Le nozze di Figaro had proved such a huge hit at the Nostitz in January 1787 (a bigger hit than in Vienna) and his final opera La clemenza di Tito premiered at the theatre in 1791, months before the composer’s untimely death. The Estates is tiny, seating just 635 (closer to 800 in Mozart’s day) and from the brief glimpses at the start of the stream one realises what an intimate experience it must be watching opera there. If the theatre looks familiar, that could be because Miloš Forman shot scenes there for his Oscar-winning film Amadeus.
