Laurent Pelly

La Belle Hélène

This is a joy from beginning to end. Although there are many tricks and ideas from Laurent Pelly, as always he seems to still retain the Offenbach magic. La Lott and Monsieur Beuron are a joy, but so is everyone else. The Patriotic Trio by the sea is both a hoot and wonderfully sung, the score seems truly complete yet never flags and the finale sequences for especially acts 1 & 2 are a joy of movement and sound fused as one glorious Offenbachian moment.

Platée

The prologue sets the stage for the action: Thespis, Momus and Thalie announce the subject of the play. It is a comedy mocking the folly of man...and the story of a trap set by Jupiter to cure Juno of her jealousy. The trap? It consists in convincing the water nymph Platée that Jupiter is in love with her. Mercury officially declares Jupiter’s love to Platée. When the god appears before her – first as a donkey, then an owl - the nymph calls on the birds of the marshes, but they scare Jupiter away. Luckily he quickly returns and declares his love for Platée. He even wants to marry her. La Folie comes to sing for the fiancée during an absolutely chaotic scene. However, as the couple prepares for the wedding, Juno arrives. Furious, she puts an end to the farce and ascends to the heavens with Jupiter. Humiliated, Platée understands she has been duped. She swims off into the marshes, as the chorus sings an ironic song in her honour.

Massenet: Cendrillon

The 2017–18 Live in HD season concluded with an enchanted performance of Cendrillon, Massenet’s glittering operatic adaptation of the Cinderella story. This charming staging by Laurent Pelly, which bursts to life with the director’s characteristic wit and whimsy, stars American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato as the title outcast-turned-princess. Mezzo-soprano Alice Coote offers a touching portrayal of the pants role Prince Charming, while soprano Kathleen Kim shines as the Fairy Godmother. Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe, as the outlandish Madame de la Haltière, and bass-baritone Laurent Naouri, as the haggard Pandolfe, round out the principal cast. On the podium, conductor Bertrand de Billy leads a performance that is equal parts madcap comedy and heartfelt romance.

Cendrillon

Massenet composed his opera about Cenerentola nearly 80 years after Rossini did his. And if you are looking for the outburst of the non-stop hilarity and the musical jokes of Rossini, you won't find it here. Also, while the Cendrillon was highly successful and popular in its time, it does not reach up to the artistic and musical levels offered by Massenet's other operas, like Manon, or Thais or Werther. Nevertheless, this is a delightful opera and it is well presented by The Royal Opera. Laurent Pelly created a ingenious setting with movable walls which are covered [in French] with the story of Cinderella, and which open and close book-like.

Robert le Diable

Recorded live at the Royal Opera House, December 2012. Daniel Oren conducting Royal Opera House Orchestra and Chorus. A grand opera that dominated the stages of Europe for most of the 19th century, Robert le diable is a masterpiece. Director Laurent Pelly breathes new life into Giacomo Meyerbeer's great spectacle and audaciously entertaining moral fable, in this colourful new staging for The Royal Opera.

Die Fledermaus - Opéra de Lille

The most brilliant of Austrian operettas takes us to the outskirts of romantic Old Vienna. It’s New Year Eve and we are in the company of Caroline, who is determined to teach her philandering husband Gaillardin a lesson, even while she is being pursued by her former beau, the operatic tenor Alfred. At the centre of the action is the extremely wealthy, eternally bored Prince Orlofsky, whose lavish masked ball brings everything to a most delicious boil. But what if the whole plot has been a cunning plan masterminded by someone just to get back at Eisenstein?

Platée (Palais Garnier)

Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Platée is a masterpiece of the French operatic repertoire and was highly regarded by critics during the composer’s lifetime. Composed for the marriage of the Dauphin Louis, son of Louis XV, to the Infanta Maria Teresa of Spain, it was first performed at Versailles in 1745 and became an instant hit. The plot revolves around the ugly and conceited frog Platée, the victim of a machination of the gods who make her believe that she is loved by Jupiter. Is this Rameau mocking Princess Maria Teresa of Spain – reputedly a woman of little beauty? Or the French court, which saw itself as a new Olympus? This classic production from the Opéra national de Paris by Marc Minkowski and Laurent Pelly returns to the stage with an entirely new cast, featuring Julie Fuchs, Mathias Vidal, Jean Teitgen and Lawrence Brownlee in the title-role.

Royal Opera House: L'Elisir d'Amore