ROYAL OPERA HOUSE

Enjoy two 20th century classics for the price of one, both staged by audacious triple Olivier Award winner Richard Jones. First there’s Gianni Schicchi - a Felliniesque black comedy of greed, double-crossing and blackmail; then L’heure espagnole, a steamy tale of sexual shenanigans, set to one of Ravel’s sultriest scores.

Composed just a few years apart, Ravel’s comédie musicale (1911) and Puccini’s opera (1918) form an ideal comic double-bill, especially in Richard Jones’s acutely witty stagings, to eye-popping designs by John Macfarlane and Nicky Gillibrand, first seen in 2007 and an instant hit with both critics and audiences. The Spanish Hour shows the clockmaker’s wife, Concepcion, receiving her various lovers at the hour when her husband Torquemada is out winding up the town’s clocks. In Gianni Schicchi, a wily peasant helps a group of greedy Florentines circumvent the will of their lately deceased relative – though helping himself to the goods at the same time. Antonio Pappano returns to conduct four performances of works for which he showed special relish when these shows were new.

Christine Rice is surrounded by her original team of lovers in Ravel’s sublime sex-comedy, while Thomas Allen takes on the role of Gianni Schicchi for only the second time, with two new lovebirds under his wing in the shape of Swedish soprano Maria Bengtsson, making her Royal Opera debut as Schicchi’s daughter Lauretta, and Stephen Costello as her boyfriend Rinuccio.

Run Time: Two hours 20 minutes | 1 Interval

Sung in French/Italian with English surtitles

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