Past Production Reviews
4I recommend booking for all three pieces (if you can) to get the full experience of the delightful operatic delicacy that is SHORTS – A FESTIVAL OF POCKET OPERAS.
Cape Town Opera and the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra are excited to announce that South African tenor Levy Sekgapane, first prize winner of Placido Domingo’s prestigious Operalia 2017 competition, will headline a one night only (24th October) Duet Gala Concert at the Artscape Opera House in support of the fundraising efforts of The Duet Endowment Trust.
Imaginatively transplanted into a dystopian South Africa of unspecified date, the Paris-based original fares remarkably well, generating both mirth and pathos. For instance, instead of the romance-promoting powercut of Act One being due to an empty meter, there is the all-too-familiar announcement, “Eskom regrets that…”The downside is impaired credibility when at Christmas (in South Affica???) there are references to freezing cold, with lightly-clad vendors at the outdoor night market cheek by jowl with shivering, heavily muffled-up patrons.Particularly successful are the comic interludes of Acts One and Four in which poverty-stricken men resort to puerile antics to allay their intense hunger and dire living conditions
A magnificent achievement: Cape Town Opera’s 2021 touring production of La bohème. There were only four shows for the Cape Town season. I hope that this production of La bohème is staged again. When we arrived at the Thursday night show in Cape Town, February 25, 2021, there was panicky talk about the Omicron coronavirus variant which was reported by South African scientists on Thursday. It felt like a replay of November 2020, when Rona numbers spiralled. We went into the theatre, heavy with anxiety and then this fantastical spectacle unfolded: Lyrical Puccini score, tragi-comedy libretto spiced up in a South African state of mind, glorious voices; astounding instrumental ensemble; fab design and costumes.
