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Opera

Opera's fallen women

No room for morals in Mariusz Trelinski's bleak new production of Henze's Boulevard Solitude for WNO; plenty of room for levity in Royal Opera's La Fille du regiment

15 March 2014

9:00 AM

15 March 2014

9:00 AM

Boulevard Solitude

Welsh National Opera, on tour until 3 April

La Fille du régiment

Royal Opera House, in rep until 18 March

Opera’s grim fascination with ‘fallen women’ — as Welsh National Opera has called its latest mini-season — lies largely in the spectacle of the fall itself. But in Hans Werner Henze’s Boulevard Solitude, the composer’s 1952 operatic debut, the heroine — a tart denied even a heart — starts off near the bottom; her fall is less precipitous than those in the other two operas the company has chosen for its theme, Puccini’s Manon Lescaut and Verdi’s La traviata.

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