Iolanta

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Royal Academy of Music, London

2007

..combining the sombre Iolanta with the screwball Schicchi is a big ask, particularly as the Royal Academy opts to sing both in their original languages. Orpha Phelan's suitably claustrophobic, modernist production gave us Tchaikovsky as Tennessee Williams: a suitably febrile world of cod-psychology and repressed sexuality. Virtually imprisoned by the garden of flowers that she couldn't see, Julia Sporsén's Iolanta charted the character's journey from introspective melancholy to the rapturous revelation of love and sight with terrific assurance. Read more The Times, March 2007  **** [Neil Fischer]

Audiences at London conservatoire opera productions, now essential diary dates, tend to divide into friends and family and talent-spotting agents and opera professionals. The Royal Academy of Music's double-bill will have given pleasure to each, with nimble productions by Orpha Phelan and no shortage of youthful promise from all over the world... Read more The Evening Standard, March 2007  **** [Fiona Maddocks]

Orpha Phelan’s productions kept things visually simple while getting the narratives over. Above all, she obtained intelligent and well crafted performances from her casts, who knew exactly what they had to do and how to do it. Opera, May 2007 [George Hall]