| On Wikipedia | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Opera_House |
| Alternative Spellings | Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Convent Garden |
| Creation | 1946 |
| City | London, United Kingdom |
| Country | United Kingdom |
The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House was founded in 1946 as the Covent Garden Orchestra, when the theatre reopened after World War II as the nation’s first permanent home for opera and ballet. […]
Karl Rankl was the first Music Director of the Covent Garden Opera Company. He played a crucial part in establishing the Company in 1946. […] Rankl resigned in summer 1951 […]. His successor, Rafael Kubelík held the post 1955–8. […] Both during this period and in later years the orchestra received many visits by guest opera conductors including John Barbirolli, Carlo Maria Giulini, Rudolf Kempe, Erich Kleiber and Otto Klemperer […].
[…] In 1961, Georg Solti took up the post of Music Director. Solti began his ten-year directorship with the intention of making the Royal Opera House 'quite simply, the best opera house in the world', and it was under his direction that the orchestra rose to its current level of international acclaim. […]
Colin Davis became Music Director of The Royal Opera in 1971. Developments under his leadership included an acclaimed series of recordings ([…]), the premieres of Tippett’s The Knot Garden and The Ice Break and the first British performances of the three-act version of Berg’s Lulu. […]
Bernard Haitink took over from Colin Davis as Music Director of The Royal Opera in 1987. From the outset he involved the orchestra in regular appearances on the concert platform, first in the Garden Concerts at the Royal Opera House, and later in major London concert halls, […].
In 1997 the Royal Opera House closed for an extensive two-year development programme. During this period the orchestra undertook a number of international concert tours in addition to performances with The Royal Ballet and The Royal Opera. […]
In December 1999 the redeveloped Royal Opera House reopened with a series of gala performances including concert performances by The Royal Opera and extracts performed by The Royal Ballet […].
The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House works regularly with leading young choreographers and contemporary composers, performing in many world premieres of works commissioned by The Royal Ballet. […]
Official Website
The priestess Norma leads her people in a prayer for peace. Sonya Yoncheva sings the title role in Bellini's masterpiece, with the Royal Opera Chorus and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House conducted by Antonio Pappano, recorded September 2016. Find out more at http://www.roh.org.uk/norma Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece Norma had its premiere at La Scala, Milan, on Boxing Day 1831. After a muted initial response the opera quickly became popular, and is now a mainstay of the repertory. Norma is perhaps most acclaimed as a vehicle for the lead soprano, most famously now by such 20th-century greats as Maria Callas, Montserrat Caballé and Joan Sutherland. Indeed, Bellini provides some astonishing vocal fireworks for his title character – most famously ‘Casta diva’, Norma’s Act I hymn to the chaste moon, and Act II’s ‘Dormono entrambi’, as she contemplates the unthinkable act of killing her children. But the opera’s dramatic potency rests in its breathtaking ensembles, most strikingly in Norma’s duets with Pollione and Adalgisa, the Act I trio ‘Vanne, sì: mi lascia, indegno’ and the blistering Act II finale. This new production of Norma was The Royal Opera’s first in nearly thirty years. Directing is Àlex Ollé, of the Catalan collective La Fura dels Baus, reunited with the creative team behind his acclaimed production of Oedipe. They give Norma a contemporary setting against a backdrop of a cruel civil war, and focus on the opera’s exploration of the conflict between an individual’s own desires and those of her society – and of religion as a force for unity and for destruction.