And so before you know it the season is here and the first audiences (for the dress rehearsal of Pelleas) come through the doors. That dress was accompanied by the familiar rain and summer chill but the weather couldn't divert the impression that Debussy's opera - and this production of it - is unlike anything we have done before. It is easy to see why people are so divided on the piece but it rewards attention and Olivia Fuchs takes us into a deeply unsettling world of endless sadness and impending doom which, despite the flowing mellifluousness and shimmering beauty of the music and the startling images Olivia has created, grips and disorientates like few others do. What audiences and critics make of it we wait to discover with fascination but it is work of a definitive seriousness. Brad Cohen conducts with all the passion he has gathered in the years of his self confessed 'obsession' with the opera
Tiredness is creeping up on the company but perhaps the adrenaline of two first nights will revive everybody? Mournful grey skies are forecast for the opening of Pelleas whereas Wednesday promises blazing sun for Carmen's arrival. Good omens maybe...
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