André Flédérick

Rigoletto

Paris Opera, October 1996. New production Jérôme Savary

Bon week-end Monsieur Bennett !

Mr. Bennett is a model citizen, a tender father and an irreproachable husband, he yearns for a quiet life. On a weekend he receives a visit from a strange man called Pédro Juarez. Mr. Bennett’s past suddenly resurfaces and his peaceful existence is turned upside down ...

Falstaff

Based, in part, on Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff is Verdi's last work for the stage - and only his second comic opera. And yet the humour in this multilayered masterpiece is distinctly wry, for all the main characters exhibit an array of human weaknesses that are implacably exposed by Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito.

Verdi: Simon Boccanegra

Abbado wholly vindicates Verdi’s intentions through his feeling for the shape of a whole scene, for the inherent subtleties of Verdi’s scoring and for certain rhythmic effects.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

This simple romantic tragedy begins in 1957. Guy Foucher, a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Geneviève Emery, an employee in her widowed mother's chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. On the evening before Guy is to leave for a two-year tour of combat in Algeria, he and Geneviève make love. She becomes pregnant and must choose between waiting for Guy's return or accepting an offer of marriage from a wealthy diamond merchant.