Boito: Mefistofele DVD – Julie Andrews, Plácido Domingo

From 1980 the Canadian director Robert Carsen worked for several years at the renowned Glyndebourne Opera Festival, for which he was awarded the Carl Ebert Ward directing. This young talent was then recognised and nurtured by huge for directing. This young talent was then recognised and nurtured by Hugues Gall, who was later to become general manager at the Paris Bastille Opera. Carsen’s breakthrough came with his production of Mefistofele, first shown in Ghent in 1988. Among the works which he has tackled with huge success are Bellini’s la Straniera and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor from the bel canto repertoire, as well as modern (classical) works, such as Igor Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale or The Lighthouse by Peter Maxwell Davies. The main centres of Carsen’s work in the 1990’s were the festival at Aix-en-Provence and the Flemish Opera, Antwerp, where the director received universal acclaim for his seven-part Puccini cycle. Where Verdi is concerned, Carsen has directed productions in Paris and Cologne of Nabucco, Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff. The New York Metropolitan Opera staged Carsen’s guest production of Peter Tchaikovsky’s Eugen Onegin, and he produced Die Frau ohne Schatten by Rochard Strauss for the Vienne State Opera. For Cologne Opera at the end of the 2000 season Carsen takkled Wagner’s summum opus – a new Ring cycle.