Queens of the Baroque

Jetske Mijnssen directs Anna Bonitatibus in La Calisto and Agrippina

Dangerous Liaisons? Lauranne Oliva (Calisto, right) caresses a reluctant Giuseppina Bridelli (Diana, left) Picture © Monika Rittershaus

Judging by how busy she has been this past season, one could be forgiven for thinking that Jetske Mijnssen was the new kid on the block among European opera directors. She was unknown to me until May 2022, when she staged Anna Bolena for Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam. Since then she has been engaged by many of the leading continental companies, and now she is making her presence felt in the UK: she was the surprise choice for this summer’s Parsifal at Glyndebourne, and in December she will make her Covent Garden debut with a new production of Handel’s Ariodante.

But the 55-year old Dutch director is hardly a newcomer to opera. She learnt her trade as a staff director for her country’s Nationale Reisopera, finally making her breakthrough with Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo at the Opéra National de Lorraine in 2016. Her rise over the past nine years has been remarkable for the very fact that Mijnssen is not a bright young trail-blazer. Indeed, on the basis of what I have seen so far, she could be described as an anti-Regietheater director. Her Donizetti in Amsterdam and Wagner at Glyndebourne, her recent staging of Agrippina in Zurich and now, most recently, Cavalli’s La Calisto at the Aix-en-Provence festival - all have underlined her skill as a director of actor-singers. In her choice of set and costume designers, these productions have showcased a stylish visual taste, suggesting that she is a linear, narrative, story-telling director.