Having just had a newsletter through the door, I can confirm that the repertoire for 2008 is as follows:

Il trovatore
La fille du regiment
La Gioconda (as I mentioned on an earlier thread)
Tosca (again)
The Magic Flute (in English)
Iolanta (on its own - a short evening!) with Orla Boylan in the title role

Comments: we do not need another Tosca or another Magic Flute.  It seems every other company is already performing them this year.
Fille du regiment - my money's on Colin Lee for the tenor role.
Gioconda - FAB - can't wait to hear who's in it.  Trovatore - likewise.
Iolanta - I suspect they think they're putting on a rarity but it's been on twice in London in the past 5 years or so - could do better.

Gioconda, as I said on the "nominate an opera for the Proms" thread, has been staged in the UK in the past 10 years but only given in concerts in London.

Would you believe that as I was typing that, the TV struck up with the British Gas (?) advert featuring the Dance of the Hours?

Tosca is a particularly unimaginative choice for Holland Park as it will be their third (at least) - surely they must have more imagination than that.  Especially when the ROH and the Raymond Gubbay folk are both staging it in the next few months.

Flute in English - well, IMHO it's possibly the one "opera" which works better in English than any other does.  We'll agree to differ on that one.  However by the time it opens there will have been FIVE productions in London within the year - Barbican/Mostly Mozart, BYO, ENO, GSMD, ROH - plus the new film - so whose idea was it that we needed another?!

Are you sure they don't do this, Ron?  I must say I can't remember seeing any G&S listed in Germany at all, but then I wouldn't really be looking for that kind of thing  I went to see 'Street Scene' in Aachen a few years ago and was amazed to discover they were using a translation (It hadn't occurred to me they might do that because the title in the listings was in English).  It quite put me off going to see 'Tommy' in Dortmund.  I'd very much like to see a prodction of this work that isn't Ken Russell's overblown film but the idea of sitting through 'Seh mich, fuhl mich' or whatever it might be wasn't attractive.

I'm not tempted by the Holland Park offerings, which is a pity because last season I went to Lakmé and enjoyed it very much; and I would have gone to Jenufa but for the fact that I couldn't stretch to two trips to London so close together.

Let alone 'Flipperautomat-Zauberer'! 

There's a way to cut the necessity of performing Flute in English.....perform it as a series of dramatic tableau linked by narration (in English). I believe this practice has been adopted for at least one recording (Harnoncourt's on Teldec), albeit not in English. 

The dialogue is no great loss, anyway. It was a wise move of Klemperer's to dispense with it altogether for his recording, though I can appreciate how this wouldn't work on stage.

And this is the whole point, of course; opera is drama, not just a string of best bits for sopranos and tenors. The action unfolds and develops: take away the dialogue or recitative and the transitions through which the characters reach their emotional states are gone, leaving a sucession of disjunct fragments like jump edits in a movie. Specific alterations made for recording (and in Klemperer's case it was as much to do with the accomodation of the opera on fewer than normal LP sides) aren't really relevant to what happens in the opera house - look at the general reaction to the removal of dialogue/recit from the recent ENO Carmen. If your argument against giving opera in a language other than the original is that it undermines the creators' intentions, then removing whole chunks and mangling the dramatic flow is surely far more destructive, (as is, for that matter, the peculiar practice of taking away the visual aspect altogether and presenting it purely as personal auditory experience in the home. )

I don’t want to go on at length, Martin, as we’re rather getting away from Holland Park; but I must say that my experience both in general and in the specific case you mention is pretty much the opposite of yours.  I actually find that the concentration required to follow parallel texts is an aid to understanding when listening to a recording.  I also, in general, find it easier to understand a live opera via surtitles than to understand what’s being sung in English!  (Haven’t they now put surtitles in at the ENO because many people find it hard to work out what’s being sung whatever the language; or was I misinformed?).  As for ‘Duke Bluebeard’s Castle’, I love it and it just isn’t the same in any language other than Hungarian.  Even reading the parallel text I cringe at some of the attempts to put Kékszakállú into four English syllables. 

I wouldn’t say I’m against opera translations.  If there’s a market for them there’s no point in being agin ‘em.  But, by and large, they’re not for me.

ta for posting this, now not bovvd about missing la trav at ROH as can see it at the summer at holland park, with a better,cheaper seat toooooooo