Recently in Reviews
22 Jun 2010
Mozart was reputedly more attached to this musical drama of hubris and honour set during the Trojan War than to any other of his stage works. »
21 Jun 2010
This recital was the last in a series of five put together by Roger Vignoles
to celebrate the lieder of Richard Strauss — a series which, comprising
85 of Strauss’ songs, has highlighted the composer’s role as heir
to the nineteenth-century German lieder masters and reminded us of the
ravishing beauty and varied emotional range of these unjustly neglected
songs. »
21 Jun 2010
With Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ stunning A Little Night
Music, at long last we have been treated to a multi-faceted production
that not only equals, but in many ways surpasses the dazzling original. »
21 Jun 2010
$32,000,000, and it would have been a bargain at $50,000,000. Los Angeles Opera went for broke, and it paid off with a Ring that has raised the worldwide Ring bar to a dizzying height. »
19 Jun 2010
Early Greek writings say that Orpheus was the son of the muse Calliope and either Apollo, the god of prophecy and music or Oeagrus, the river god. »
18 Jun 2010
Paris Opéra recently served up two past productions in vibrant performances that were fresh-as-new. »
18 Jun 2010
Recorded in May and June 2008, this new Unitel Classica Blu-Ray disc of Götterdämmerung is the final opera in the staging of Richard Wagner’s Ring der Nibelungen staged at the Palau de les Arts “Reina Sofia”, Valencia, by La Fura dels Baus, Valencia, conducted by Zubin Mehta, and directed by Carlus Padrissa. »
18 Jun 2010
A Franco Zeffirelli production for The Metropolitan Opera typically prompts the use of adjectives such as “grandiose,” or “gorgeous” on the positive end or “gaudy” and “gratuitous” on the negative. »
10 Jun 2010
Garsington has become a distinctive part of the English summer opera season. »
09 Jun 2010
György Ligeti (1923-2006) was a naughty boy, and he reveled in it. »
09 Jun 2010
The opening tableau of Penny Woolcock’s new production depicts deep waters with rays of sun hitting the surface; in the murky blue depths, three harnessed acrobats glide down to the sea bed and back up again. »
09 Jun 2010
Siegfried is a challenging opera to stage effectively, and the presentation by La Fura dels Baus in Zubin Mehta’s new Ring cycle merits attention on various counts. »
08 Jun 2010
It was more the ruins than the remnants of a once-great voice that Jessye Norman brought to Israel’s new, 6500-seat outdoor opera theater at the foot of historic Masada Mountain. »
08 Jun 2010
Israel Opera Nabucco includes three Va pensiero’s It’s apocrypha, of course, but legend has it that since its 1843 premiere at La Scala audiences have wanted an encore of the chorus Va pensiero when Verdi’s Nabucco is on stage. »
08 Jun 2010
Faust has long since left the French repertory to enter the international repertory, meaning that, like Disneyland, it has been absorbed into diverse cultures where it discovers new resonances. »
08 Jun 2010
Detailed and precise, but never fussy, David McVicar’s thought-provoking production of Le Nozze di Figaro is ‘busy’ from the opening rushing semi-quavers of the overture. »
07 Jun 2010
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, son of an Italian mother and a German father, was born
in Venice but acclaimed only when he took his operas to Germany, where he
became quite popular during the first decades of the twentieth century. »
07 Jun 2010
Opera Australia regularly commission new work. Usually serious subjects
drawn from notable Australian literature or dealing with an event or hero from
Australian history. »
07 Jun 2010
During its recently concluded season Lyric Opera of Chicago presented two
musical pieces based on the theme of “Faust.” »
07 Jun 2010
Everyone knows the tunes from Bizet's Carmen even if they don't know it's an opera. Now the Royal Opera House, London, is making the world's best known opera into the world's first 3D opera film. »
07 Jun 2010
In Europe only a few theater stage directors are operatically more famous than Peter Stein (pronounced Pay-tear), to mention Sir Peter Hall, Patrice Chereau and Giorgio Strehler as examples. »
07 Jun 2010
Seeing Tosca at the Coliseum brings back happy memories, as it was a
performance of Tosca (in a revival of the Keith Warner production in the 1990s) which occasioned my very first trip to the ENO. That also happens to have been
the first time I ever saw Tosca. »
06 Jun 2010
Bringing their recent recording of Schubert’s late songs to the concert stage, Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano swept through a sequence which ranged from bitter-sweet regret to angry self-reproach, from hesitant hope to turbulent despair, in this the second of two performances at the Wigmore Hall. »
05 Jun 2010
Alban Berg died in 1935, but his music was generations ahead of his time
– as one could not help but conclude during the recent revival of
Lulu at the Met whenever the vibraphone played “doorbell”
music, reminding us of the intrusion of cell phones into theaters. »
01 Jun 2010
One very tall and gaunt,one short and stocky, one introspective, one effusive : Ian Bostridge and Antonio Pappano, Music Director of the Royal Opera house make an odd couple, but they've partnered each other musically for many years. It's a good relationship, as this recital at the Wigmore Hall demonstrated. »
27 May 2010
The second of Zubin Mehta’s new Ring cycle on DVD, the staging of Die Walküre by La Fura dels Baus, is as engaging as the production of Das Rheingold in its innovative presentation and effective performance of one of Wagner’s most popular operas. »
22 May 2010
Star born through stutter? It’s immediately obvious that Jacques Imbrailo’s
Billy Budd at Glyndebourne is an extraordinary portrayal. His stammer is more expressive than speech. »
20 May 2010
Listeners who have appreciated Gerald Finley’s stylish and moving
singing of baritone roles in operas by Mozart and other composers will be
pleased with the recent CD release of Great Operatic Arias in English. »
20 May 2010
Expectations were running high for the opening night of Elaine Kidd’s
revival of Laurent Pelly’s production of Donizetti’s mad-cap romp,
La Fille du regiment — almost as high as Tonio’s infamous
top Cs. »
19 May 2010
At the Wigmore Hall, performers can chose daring repertoire, because audiences there are unusually receptive. »
18 May 2010
Some fortunate operas have any number of fine live versions available on DVD. »
17 May 2010
Recorded live at the Palau de les Arts “Reina Sofia”,
Valencia, this new video of Richard Wagner’s Das Rheingold
is based on the staging of La Fura dels Baus, with Carlus Padrissa, stage
director, and featuring an international cast conducted by Zubin Mehta. »
17 May 2010
Back in 1989 Ken Russell opened his Genovese Mefistofele with heavenly choirs contemplating the divinity of a praying mantis. »
17 May 2010
“If you could take any one memory with you to eternity, which one would you choose?” In Michel van der Aa’s After Life several people meet in a waiting room. »
15 May 2010
Tristan has been a fairly frequent visitor in Genoa over the past sixty years (post WW II). Tullio Serafin conducted the Isolde of Maria Callas there in 1948. »
12 May 2010
Richard Eyre’s production of La traviata is so beautiful that it can be watched repeatedly, yet still yield pleasure. But appearances, however splendid, aren’t quite enough to make a completely satisfying evening. »
10 May 2010
It’s glorious and it’s gripping; it’s grand — and
it’s good! Indeed, Jake Heggie’s Moby Dick,
premiered by Dallas Opera in its handsome new Winspear Opera House on April 30,
is a work that restores meaning to basic vocabulary made banal by overuse
through the decades. »
10 May 2010
London’s Wigmore Hall is one of the world’s great centres for art song. This recital, by Susan Bickley and Iain Burnside, specialists in the genre, showed that English language art song is alive and thriving. »
02 May 2010
Armida is fabulous. That is to say, the story is a fable. Rinaldo,
the very type of Christian warrior, is torn between his duty to lead the First
Crusade and the sensual ecstasies offered by the beautiful sorceress Armida. »
02 May 2010
It’s time Verdi got attention in Aida, not elephants. »
28 Apr 2010
Thomas Adès’s Powder Her Face is back at the Linbury Studio Theatre at the Royal Opera House. It's a classic. Once again, Joan Rodgers sings the Duchess, supported by Alan Ewing, Iain Paton and the incomparable Rebecca Bottone, all in multiple roles. »
27 Apr 2010
Fifty-five years after its premiere, composer and creator reunite for a new
production at Boston University »
27 Apr 2010
The story of Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (The
Barber of Seville) is based on Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’
1775 play, Le barbier de Séville. »
27 Apr 2010
It started with a bang and ended with a whimper. Juilliard’s
production of Francis Poulenc’s opera Dialogues des Carmélites
opened on Wednesday, April 21 and the performance started out strong. »
26 Apr 2010
Pick the word: soupçon? snippet? tidbit? quark? to describe the infinitesimal bite of Wagner bestowed upon us by the Met this year — and we had to wait till the end of April, to boot! »
26 Apr 2010
Chaos and disorder rule at Los Angeles Opera of late, and not just in the fervid imagination of director Achim Freyer, the artistic force behind the controversial staging of Richard Wagner’s four-evening glorification of chaos and disorder. »
24 Apr 2010
The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland
— College Park is presenting Shadowboxer, an opera based on the
life of Joe Louis, with music composed by Frank Proto to a libretto by John
Chenault. »