Product Review

Presented in its Covent Garden premiere in Autumn 2013, this staging of Verdi's Les Vepres Siciliennes - directed by Stefan
Herheim and conducted by the Royal Opera's Music Director, Verdi specialist Sir Antonio Pappano - went on to win the
prestigious Olivier Award for Best New Opera Production. The Sunday Times hailed it "the best the Verdi year in Britain has to offer," praising the standout event of the Verdi bicentenary celebrations.
Herheim, whose reputation was cemented with his production of Parsifal at Bayreuth in 2008, is a director with a flair for
spectacle - and a sense of irony - who rarely takes an operatic scenario at face value. Rather than telling a story of 13th-century conflict between the Sicilians and their French oppressors, his production, transposed to the mid-19th century, provides a commentary on the extravagant world of Parisian opera with its politics, exploitation and betrayals.