Event: Latvia - Riga

Riga Opera Festival

When:	6 - 23 Jun 2008 (annual)
Where:	Riga National Opera
Costs:	Ls4-Ls50
Opening Hours:	7pm; Siegfried 5pm

First held in 1998, the annual Riga Opera Festival closes the Latvian National Opera season in fine style. It features productions that have been premièred through the preceding season as well as welcoming guest companies to follow in Richard Wagner's footsteps and perform in Riga.

Wagner was assistant conductor in Riga from 1837 to 1839 (when he was in his middle 20s), around the time he was composing his Roman epic Rienzi (so before the works, from The Flying Dutchman that are regarded as his major canon). One of the projects the Riga Opera Festival has set itself has been to mount a Ring Cycle, which reaches its third instalment in 2008.

Siegfried is the first of four operas featured (and repeated) in the 2008 Festival, conducted by Cornelius Meister and directed by Gintaras Varnas, starring Johnny van Hal in the title role, with Egils Silins as Wotan (6, 11 & 14 June).

The company's new production of Carmen, premièred last October with local star mezzo Elina Garanca, returns (8 & 15 June) conducted by Martins Ozolins , who also conducts Dvorák's Rusalka (7 & 12 June). Verdi - always a favourite of the Riga Opera festival (his Requiem has been performed three times in memory of the victims of the Nazi's mass deportation on 14 June 1941) - is represented by La traviata, conducted by Gintaras Rinkevicius (10 & 13 June).

The festival is completed this year by a visit of Moscow's famous Bolshoi Opera company with two productions, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin and Eimuntas Nekrosius' controversial production of Leonid Desyatnikov's The Children of Rosenthal, to a libretto by Vladimir Sorokin.

Full details can be found on Latvian National Opera's Riga Opera Festival website.