<<  -- 3 --  Roderic Dunnett    BEYOND BRUSSELS

The final event last season, Madam Butterfly (Vlaamse Opera usually performs in the original with Flemish surtitles), starred Cheryl Barker as Cio-Cio San, Mikhail Dawidoff as Pinkerton, the excellent Peter Coleman-Wright as Sharpless, and Jean Rigby as an empathetic Suzuki. Silvio Varviso conducted.

Well endowed and fortunate in possessing two fine showpiece theatres in Antwerp and Gent (the refined interior of the latter feels like walking into a theatre in the Vienna of Joseph II), Vlaamse Opera enters its 2000-l season on a high.

Zanetti launches with Rigoletto (Antwerp l0 Sep-3 Oct, Gent ll-21 Oct) starring Bruno Caproni in the title role and directed by Guy Joosten, who staged Oedipus last season. Then the outstanding character bass Monte Jaffe, well-known to English National Opera audiences from his earth-shattering appearances as Reimann's Lear and Stephen Oliver's disillusioned Timon of Athens, and recently seen in New York as Osmin in Mozart's Seraglio, sings Nekrotzar in one of the pillars of modern opera, Ligeti's le Grand Macabre (Antwerp 7-16 Nov, Gent 23 Nov-3 Dec).

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