12 Mar 2010
When the orchestra re-tuned itself between the intermissionless acts of the Met premiere of The Nose last week, many in the audience were uncertain whether they were hearing practice or prelude. »
11 Mar 2010
The curtain rises on an enormous pile of crumbling reinforced concrete,
broken wires sticking out every which way – an image that has replaced
(at least in the minds of set designers) the romantic columned or castellated
ruins that thrilled our ancestors, especially around the time, 1846, that Verdi
composed Attila. »
09 Mar 2010
As a medic with a keen knowledge of psychology, Jonathan Miller probably knows a thing or two about elixirs and placebos. »
09 Mar 2010
The global credit crunch, with its painful exposure of the moral and literal
bankruptcy of our own age, provides the perfect backdrop for this new
production of Prokofiev’s The Gambler, the first ever staging of
this opera at The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. »
08 Mar 2010
In its current revival of Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production showcases the strengths and foibles of humanity, while assuring the ultimate triumph of love. »
08 Mar 2010
This second of two recitals of Schubert songs by Matthias Goerne and Helmut Deutsch at the Wigmore Hall, London was superb, the programme created with exceptional intelligence and insight into the inner dynamics of Schubert’s music. »
08 Mar 2010
Handel’s Tamerlano, in the production by Graham Vick, is well
known, but its run at the Royal Opera House is unusual because many of the cast
are creating the roles for the first time. It isn't a live reprise of the DVD,
but more challenging. »
05 Mar 2010
The Baden State Theatre's new mounting of I Masnadieri may not completely be the production of one’s dreams. »
05 Mar 2010
In this, the first of two recitals with pianist Helmut Deutsch, baritone Matthias Goerne continued his very personal journey through the landscape of Schubert’s lieder, a passage which is currently being preserved on an outstanding series of discs by Harmonia Mundi. »
05 Mar 2010
As the first familiar themes of Ariadne came from the pit, I felt
myself sinking — sinking from a tense, dreary, daily world into a sort of
ecstatic fantasy — a place where all was happy, funny, romantic, inane,
fateful and surprising all at once — Sarah Connolly superb, Kathleen Kim
charming, Nina Stemme full-throated, »
04 Mar 2010
Zürich Opera’s poster for their new production of Idomeneo is a knockout. »
11 Feb 2010
Gluck’s Armide, as semi-staged (costumed dancers but no
scenery) at the Rose Theater by the Washington-based Opera Lafayette, was
exactly what Gluck designed the piece to be: a supremely elegant entertainment. »
07 Feb 2010
Donizetti’s original concept of Lucia di Lammermoor is revealed in its true glory in this ground breaking production by the English National Opera, first heard in 2008. The opera is loved in its familiar form, but the new critical edition reveals the depth of Donizetti’s musical creation. »
04 Feb 2010
For those who might be seeking a representational tale of the legendary Roman slave Spartacus, well, Gladiator this ain’t. »
02 Feb 2010
First seen in 1995, and here receiving its seventh revival, Jonathan Miller’s Così fan tutte has lost none of its power to unsettle and discomfort. »
02 Feb 2010
Gil Shohat, now 35 and Israeli’s top classical composer, was 15 when
in the ‘80s he saw Hanoch Levin’s The Child Dream on stage in his native Tel Aviv. Shohat, of course, knew Levin’s work well, for throughout early decades in the history of Israel he — its outstanding dramatist — had served somewhat as the conscience of a nation tormented defining itself within its pain-wrought beginnings. »
01 Feb 2010
The Wigmore Hall was bursting its seams in excited anticipation of this recital by the American mezzo-soprano, Joyce DiDonato. »
29 Jan 2010
Melodic and scenic gaiety predominates in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new
production of Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow. »
25 Jan 2010
Covent Garden has revived director Robert Lepage’s popular and well-traveled version of The Rake’s Progress with often thrilling results. »
22 Jan 2010
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, around 1777, the Empress Maria
Theresa used to visit Prince Esterhazy’s summer palace at Esterhàza,
where there was an opera house fully equipped with stage machinery, leading
singers, an orchestra, and a guy named Joseph Haydn to compose on cue. »
18 Jan 2010
Stiffelio was composed just after Luisa Miller — an opera that has had little trouble holding its own in the repertory — and just before the magic trio of Rigoletto, Trovatore and Traviata, the first Verdi operas to take their immediate place on the stages of the world and hold them without a break from that day to this. »
18 Jan 2010
Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
Not all to that bright station dared to climb
And happier they their happiness who knew
Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time »
18 Jan 2010
Concert performances of operas are often problematic in that the work tends to be cut or otherwise played around with, or the venue is inappropriate - after all, these were meant to be staged pieces. »
17 Jan 2010
Elina Garanča conceals her gleaming gold tresses beneath a curly black wig to sing Carmen. »
08 Jan 2010
Well into the 1960s, ‘provincial theaters’ were the backbone of Italy’s operatic culture. »
29 Dec 2009
David Agler must be feeling a trifle unlucky. Having in 2005 taken over the reins of a flourishing, internationally renowned opera festival, with a stylish new opera house in the planning and the Irish economy booming, his hopes must been high; but in the event the Canadian’s first few years as Artistic Director of the Wexford Festival Opera have been far from plain-sailing. »
18 Dec 2009
The roles Richard Strauss composed for his “chorus” of Five Serving Maids in Elektra — all that remains in the opera of the commentator chorus in Sophocles’ tragedy — are short but arduous. »
18 Dec 2009
Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s early opera Ernani have become relatively infrequent primarily because of the difficulties of casting the work requiring four demanding roles. »
18 Dec 2009
Exchanging the stage of The Royal Opera House — where he is currently
performing the role of His Highness in Tchaikovsky’s fairy-tale opera,
The Tsarina's Slippers — »
18 Dec 2009
Encountering Frankfurt Opera’s staging of Leoni’s L’Oracolo and Puccini’s Le Villi, I was reminded of that old saw about the German weather. »
18 Dec 2009
It is hard to know where to start to adequately laud Netherlands Opera’s witty new La Fanciulla del West. »
18 Dec 2009
The one thing certain about the judgment of history is that history will change its mind. »
15 Dec 2009
Il Corsaro, the Verdi rarity currently on display at Zürich Opera, is the best of both possible worlds. »
11 Dec 2009
The Tales of Hoffmann is a cruel piece, for all the wit of the macabre tales on which it is based and the sparkle the dying Offenbach put into his last and grandest score. »
11 Dec 2009
Musically, Australia looks to Britain and Europe, especially for its operatic diet and America’s considerable operatic output has been overlooked. »
10 Dec 2009
In dark, damp December we need good cheer, and Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera House, delivers colour and spectacle. in abundance. It's a revival of the John Schlesinger production from 1884, and somewhat antiquated, but that's no disadvantage, for the passage of time haunts Der Rosenkavalier. »
08 Dec 2009
Spearheaded by a stunning design concept for The Tsarina’s Slippers, London’s Covent Garden served up as delectable a production as could be desired, and introduced its lucky patrons to a jewel of an under-performed comic opera in the bargain. »
06 Dec 2009
For its second production of the 2009-10 season Lyric Opera of Chicago staged a revival of Charles Gounod’s Faust, last seen here in 2003-04. »
04 Dec 2009
The best news about the Met’s eleven-year-old Jonathan Miller
production of Le Nozze di Figaro is that it has been restaged by
Gregory Keller, more tautly spun, many elegant jokes or character moments
inserted, several idiocies discarded and with plenty of room remaining for
singers with a flair for it (such as Luca Pisaroni and Isabel Leonard) to
invent comic business of their own. »
02 Dec 2009
Sir Peter Hall created this production of Otello at Chicago Lyric Opera in 2001. »
01 Dec 2009
ENO did not exactly ‘import a choir of Heathens’ to encourage the Shaws of this world to ‘hasten’ to its version of ‘Messiah’ ‘if only to witness the delight of the public and the discomfiture of the critics,’ the contribution of ‘Heathens’ in musical terms being limited to representing the populace of an initially grey Britain (or so I assume) but for every critic who was discomfited — most of us — there were hundreds of audience members who loved it, so it’s fairly safe to predict a considerable hit. »
30 Nov 2009
Mark Padmore and The English Concert took us on a journey from the dark depths of melancholy to the ethereal transcendence of joy, in a display of consummate artistry at the Wigmore Hall. »
27 Nov 2009
The question that puzzled me when attending Esther was Why. »
24 Nov 2009
Like most opera companies, the Mozart/da Ponte trifecta of Figaro,
Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte are central to Opera
Australia’s repertoire. »
24 Nov 2009
There was a certain inevitability about the build-up to Iestyn Davies’ recital at the Wigmore Hall in London last Wednesday. »
17 Nov 2009
Leoš Janáček’s From the House of the Dead is a
very odd duck to find on the stage of a grand opera house. »
15 Nov 2009
London has long been spoiled in the operatic rarity department, thanks to companies like Opera Rara, Chelsea Opera Group and University College Opera populating various areas of the Venn diagram that is obscure repertoire. »
![Jonathan Peter Kenny as Oberon and David Gooderson as Puck [Photo by Richard Hubert Smith courtesy of the English Touring Opera]](http://www.operatoday.com/Jonathan-Peter-Kenny-and-Da.gif)