Göteborg Opera is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Founded in 1994, the company, which won the award for Sustainability at the International Opera Awards 2022, strives to be efficient in all its operations when working with finite and renewable resources. Its celebratory 2024/25 season includes new productions of Verdi’s Otello and Britten’s Peter Grimes, along with performances of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, a double bill of Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor and Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta, and Bizet’s Carmen and Puccini’s Tosca.
Verdi’s Otello, receiving its first staging in Gothenburg for 55 years, will be directed by the Spanish director Rafael R. Villalobos and conducted by Vincenzo Milletarì, but features a very Swedish cast, with Swedish Court singer Michael Weinius making his role debut as Otello, his dream role, which made him want to become an opera singer as a young boy at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, Gothenburg-born Julia Sporsén as Desdemona and Jens Søndergaard as Iago.
Perhaps, even more intriguingly, Britten’s Peter Grimes is being performed by a largely non-Anglophone cast, a fact that signals not only the international acceptance of the opera but will bring different perspectives to the performance. British director Netia Jones’s production is inspired by the Swedish West coast and features Joachim Bäckström in the title role with Matilda Sterby as Ellen and Åke Zetterström as Balstrode. Distinguished mezzo-soprano Katarina Karnéus features as Auntie. The conductor is Christoph Gedschold, music director of Oper Leipzig.
The revival of Yoshi Oïda’s 2016 production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly features the 1904 Brescia version of the opera. This was Puccini’s first revision, made after the unsuccessful premiere. This was the first version to divide the opera into three acts, but this version is less revised than the final version and more openly condemnatory of colonialism and exoticism.
Full details of Göteborg Opera’s season from the company’s website.
