Having given the UK premiere of Gounod’s opera La nonne sanglante in 2021, Gothic Opera are planning the UK stage premiere of another 19th century opera inspired by Matthew Gregory Lewis’ gothic novel, The Monk.
At Halloween, Gothic Opera is presenting Donizetti’s Maria de Rudenz at Battersea Arts Centre. The production, a collaboration between Gothic Opera and Battersea Arts Centre, will be conducted by Anna Castro Grinstein and directed by Lysanne van Overbeek with a new chamber orchestration by composer Leon Haxby.
Anna Castro Grinstein is a Britten Pears Young Artist and she made her debut at Opera Holland Park this Summer as conductor of the young artists performance of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. Lysanne van Overbeek directed Will Todd’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with IF Opera in 2023 [see my review] in a production celebrating the work’s 10th anniversary. Leon Haxby’s chamber reduction of Bartok’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle was used Gothic Opera’s radical new version which premiered in 2021 [see my review]. We caught Gothic Opera at the Grimeborn Festival this year when they revived their debut production of Marschner’s Der Vampyr [see my review]
Described as a dramma tragico, Maria de Rudenz premiered in Venice in 1838 and was described by Donizetti as ‘a fiasco’, and further performances of the opera in Rome were unsuccessful, but performances with superior casts led to the opera being more successful. It was presented in concert in the UK by Opera Rara (and recorded) in 1974 but has never been staged here.
Maria de Rudenz came at a time of transition for Donizetti, between the premiere of Roberto Devereux in Venice and the failure to bring Poliuto to the stage in Naples because of censorship problems. Poliuto would be radically reworked as Les Martyrs for the Paris Opera, and from henceforth Donizetti’s focus was on performances in Paris.
Full details from Gothic Opera’s website.
