Coming Soon, The Ghosts of Versailles

We hear that one of the finest American operas of the twentieth century is finally about to be released for the first time on disc: I fell under the spell of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles a few years ago, thanks to an old VHS of the original Metropolitan Opera production from 1991 (with a cast that included Teresa Stratas, Marilyn Horne, Renée Fleming and Håkan Hagegård), so I was thrilled to learn that an audio recording (made from concerts) from an LA Opera production earlier this year is due out on Pentatone in March of next year.

Ghosts is in a sense a postmodern sequel to Il barbiere di Siviglia and Le Nozze di Figaro, with a plot that's loosely based on Beaumarchais's La Mère coupable (The Guilty Mother), set twenty years after Figaro and focusing on the Count and Countess Almaviva's two illegitimate children - her son to Cherubino (himself killed on the battlefield in the interim) and his daughter to one of his many extra-marital conquests. But there's a twist: the action of La Mère coupable itself becomes an opera-within-the-opera, penned on the spot by the ghost of Beaumarchais in order to cheer up the ghost of the recently-executed Marie Antoinette (just go with it - it's great fun!).

Corigliano's marvellous, eclectic score conjures a suitably bleak, Expressionistic sound-world for the Ghosts, whilst the opera-within-an-opera is full of wonderfully witty pastiches of the Mozart and Rossini operas based on the two earlier parts of Beaumarchais's trilogy.

The recording features Patricia Racette as Marie Antoinette, Christopher Maltman as Beaumarchais, Lucas Meacham as his creation Figaro (who has a tongue-twisting patter-aria even more fiendish that his counterpart in Rossini's Barber of Seville!), and Patti LuPone as the flamboyant Turkish chanteuse Samira (the role originally conceived for Horne - a ten-minute cameo, but a real scene-stealer), and is conducted by LA Opera's musical director James Conlon. We'll be running a Presto interview with the composer nearer the time, so watch this space!

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