Porgy and Bess 2010Opéra de Lyon
Read more about the opera Porgy and Bess
This Festival production by Opéra de Lyon seemed an odd choice, just a few months after the wonderful Cape Town staging had delighted Edinburgh audiences. But anyone who saw that would surely want to see the work again. Also, of course, there is an element of the Festival audience which is not there all the year round. This staging was also well received in most quarters, though it was treated as a hybrid musical rather than opera, with lots of video and other irrelevant detail - so completely different from the Chabrier, Debussy and Tchaikovsky works the Lyon company had brought on earlier visits.
One or two cast members were familiar to British audiences, including Gregg Baker, a veteran of Simon Rattle's historically important Glyndebourne version. On the whole, this just seemed to lack the conviction of the Cape Towners' interpretation, with its indelible sense of a living community.
