Nerone

"The performances captured here are excellent. All the principals sing very well indeed. Miklós Sebestyén as Tigellinus is particularly effective, as is Rafael Rojas as Nerone ... The female principals are well taken, although neither of them can be said to have a particularly beautiful voice ... The chorus is appropriately powerful, and the orchestra play superbly, as one might expect in Vienna. Sonically, the production is excellent, as is the set lighting ... The sets are minimalist in the current manner, and some degree of imagination is required of the viewer, but at least there are no ultra-modern idiocies".

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"The singers do the best they can to overcome [the] dramatic hurdles, and much of the success of this performance is due to those efforts. Even shorn of his final Act, Rafael Rojas gives a fully rounded portrayal of the psychotic, haunted, yet fundamentally artistic Emperor with his petulant changes of mood from sentimentality to sadistic violence and back again ... The pagan side of Rome is also represented by his hulking henchman Tigellinus in the shape of the bully-boy characterisation of Miklós Sebestyén, and the more sinister Simon Magus in the firmly declaimed tones of Lucio Gallo who even manages at times to make one overlook his absurdly modern hairstyle ... Best of all is Brett Polegato as Fanuèl, who has by far the best music in the opera in terms of pure singing and can also rise to the heights with a well-controlled lyrical baritone. The choral body, with Bregenz Festival performers reinforced by the Prague Philharmonic, needs to be massive if it is to make its proper impact; and in the Act One finale it is ... It is good to see that Nerone is finally being taken up again by opera houses, and hopefully we can look forward to further new productions".

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"Boito's Nerone ... shows what a fine composer Boito was - and here it receives a stylish, serious staging from the 2021 Bregenz Festival. At its centre is a powerful performance from the late Rafael Rojas as Nerone himself, vocally persuasive and dramatically impressive ... Olivier Tambosi's production presents a dark world of contemporary decadence ... With punchy, dramatic playing from the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under Dirk Kaftan, the work is allowed to cast a strange, dark spell that is ultimately difficult to resist ... A most welcome release".