Milk-Punch, o Wisky? Madama Butterfly opens in Athens

As expected, the premiere of Madama Butterfly of February the 26th at the Athens Megaron was a personal triumph for Chinese diva Hui He.

Hui He appeared extremely confident and excelled both vocally and dramatically. A voice of important volume, easy high notes, great fraseggio -still some flaws in pronunciation though- and a committed actress, He was sensational in every aspect, received a long applause after "Un bel dí" and was hair-raising in "Che tua madre" and "Tú,tú piccolo iddio".

Listen to Hui He singing "Un bel di"


Angelo Simos as Pinkerton sounded strained in the high register (Dovunque al mondo) and was shadowed significantly by Hui He, especially during the love-duet (Bimba dagli occhi). Furthermore, he appeared uncomfortable on stage and we couldn't help noticing that he didn't take his eyes off of the lateral conductor screens. Still, at times, especially during the most lyric bars of the score, a healthy shiny voice would emerge, unable though to erase the impressions.


Marissia Papalexiou was impressive dramatically and seemed to be the only one respecting 100% the instructions of Fausta Mazzucchelli who was responsible for the "choreography". Suzuki is a rather thankless role and doesn't give to the mezzo many chances to unfold her virtues, other than the duet with Butterfly and Act III but Papalexiou's dark mezzo suited perfectly the part and sang a powerful Suzuki. Thankless is also the role of Sharpless, but Dimitris Tiliakos was a credible and well sung Sharpless, however a bit on the dull side (an impression I have had of his last few performances in Athens).


Far duller was the staging by Nikos Petropoulos, a staging with the sole virtue of not offending the conservative audience: no nudity -thank God!- no blood, no real hara-kiri on stage, nothing extreme but also nothing new to recommend.

Two great Butterflies of the past honoured us with their presence:

Marina Krilovici

Jeanette Pilou

Tonight 3/3, Hui He sang her 3rd and last performance of Madama Butterfly in Athens and we can only wish to have her back soon in one of her other significant roles (Tosca, Aida, Amelia) or in something as surprising as her smashing Ariadne, a few months ago.

Hui He posing for parsifal's backstage

Hui He, Con onor muore...

A photo album from the curtain calls:

Anna Caterina + Gregory reunited

The two leads of Alceste, Anna Caterina Antonacci and Gregory Kunde arrived in Athens on Thursday and headed straight to the press conference where they made some pretty interesting points on Gluck's music and his heroine.

The two of them had primarily worked together in Athens, in a production of "L' Incoronazione di Poppea", met again in Paris for Les Troyens (available on DVD) and now they reunite, just for two nights, to sing the (not so) fatal couple of Alceste and Admète.


Gregory Kunde, says "LIVE STRONG" via his wristband


Les chaussures de la Diva

Bellissima Antonacci

During the press conference

Alceste will go on the stage of the Athens Megaron
on the 19th and 22nd of October
- in concert version,
with Anna Caterina Antonacci in the title role,
Gregory Kunde as Adméte,
Dimitris Tiliakos as Hercule,
Dimitris Platanias as the High Priest,
Vassilis Kavayas as Evandre

accompanied by the Orchestra of Patras
under the baton of renowned maestro George Petrou.

Listen to La Antonacci in "Divinités du Styx"
(Madrid 2005)

Per me giunto é il dí supremo!

Did you listen to the Don Carlo broadcast on Saturday?

Am I the only one who enjoyed it that much?

Mainly, it was for the presence of Dimitris Tiliakos as Rodrigo in the cast ! I was dazzled that this great baritone, this marvelous artist, the "artistic child" of Kostas Paskalis, found his way to stardom. And I' m also happy that i haven't read a single bad review on the web.

And of course i was relieved that after a quite mediocre premier
-the one you can listen to here-
this broadcast was soooo much better.

Rolando, Sonia, Ferrucio, Marina, Eric, Robert and Dimitris of course,
delivered a very good performance that i keep listening for the past 2 days.

(Wrong: while riding my car yesterday i also listened to the Karajan Don Carlo -Carreras, Baltsa, Freni etc- and the Levine Don Carlo- Milo, Sylvester, Zajick, Croft, Furlanetto etc and what i can tell is that Michael Sylvester's Carlo is one of the worst i've ever heard...what was Levine thinking?? If there are people who think that Rolando was bad, maybe they should listen to this -studio- Carlo...).

Sadly, i still haven't located any fotos of Dimitris Tiliakos as Rodrigo but i 'm sure you 're gonna like the ones i' ve uploaded. It's Dimitris as Don Giovanni in Athens a couple of years ago.

Tiliakos and Katsuli


Tiliakos as Don Giovanni

Dimitris Tiliakos and Renata Scotto
at the Boccanegra reception, 2008


Listen to Dimitris Tiliakos as Don Giovanni here
or
download and listen to the DON CARLO performance of June the 28th
as it was broadcast live from the Royal Opera House
(part1, part2, part3)

Dimitris Tiliakos hits the ROH! Updated!

Tiliakos as Boccanegra in Athens

Dimitris Tiliakos, will be replacing Simon Keenlyside at the Don Carlo performance of the 17th of June (tomorrow).

Due to illness Simon Keenlyside is unable to sing the role of Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa and Pumeza Matshikiza is unable to sing the role of Tebaldo in Don Carlo with The Royal Opera on Tuesday 17 June.

The role of Rodrigo will now be sung by Greek baritone Dmitri Tiliakos marking his debut with The Royal Opera. He recently made his debut in the role of Rodrigo at the Opéra-Bastille in Paris. Other recent roles include his role debut as Simon Boccanegra for Greek National Opera and Iago (Otello) in Graz and at the Warsaw Festival.

We remind you that Dimitri Tiliakos has already stepped in for Dmitri Hvorostovsky at the Paris Don Carlo (where he sang the June the 10th performance and will also sing the one on June the 22nd).

In bocca al lupo to our Dimitri!

Download 3 audio clips from the performance of June the 10th (Paris) with Dimitris Tiliakos HERE.

You can watch a video of Tiliakos singing Conte di Luna in Athens (2003) HERE

and from the same performance, the Leonora-Di Luna duet with Dimitra Theodossiou and Dimitris Tiliakos.

Ángela Marambio conquers Athens

Ángela Marambio during the curtain calls

Not many things have changed since the dress rehearsal a couple of days ago. I got out of the theatre thinking once again that this was a very cold staging, lacking personality, originality and power. I found the sets a bit odd (the first set for the Prologue and the Finale was terrible) and the costumes didn’t have character…Gabriele Adorno dressed like an astronaut in Act III, Boccanegra dressed like a Hell’s Angel in the Prologue but then again dressed like a buffone rather than the Doge of Genoa in the rest of the opera. Too bad, too bad as the production really undermined some beautiful interpretations.

As expected, this was a personal triumph for Ángela Marambio, singing Maria/Amelia Grimaldi even if at the beginning she was quite nervous. She created though an extraordinary portrayal of the character! What a beautiful voice, so warm, with so many harmonics, brava Ángela!

Dimitris Tiliakos, very nervous too as Simone. And this time he didn’t seem to be getting over it as time went by. His voice sounded wobbly, even if his volume was huge and his general approach to the role was very “italianate” and elegant, vaguely reminding of his late teacher, Kostas Paskalis.

Dimitris Platanias as Paolo also deserves special credit as he sang with voice robust, healthy, and maschile and created a believable Albiani.

Francesco Demuro (Gabriele Adorno) displays a very good technique but a rather weird nasal sound, however take note that this promising young singer has been singing professionally for just a few months.

Bálint Szabó’s Jacopo Fiesco was correct, but it seemed underpowered and went unnoticed.

Once again I will give kudos to maestro Montanaro for making a bad orchestra sound/play so good. Kudos also to the coro.

Ah! I almost forgot! At the Athens Megaron tonight were present Renata Scotto (who is currently in Athens preparing the regia of a new Turandot) enchanting as always, signing autographs and always available to be photographed with/by her fans, Jeanette Pilou, Kiki Morfoniou (Callas’ Adalgisa and Neris at the Epidaurus), Arda Madikian and Elena Kelessidi.

And just to get an idea,
here’s Ángela Marambio singing Come in quest’ora bruna
on opening night