Performances

05 Oct 2020

ETO Autumn 2020 Season Announcement: Lyric Solitude

English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing. »

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09 Oct 2009

Tosca at the MET

In the end the performance does not rescue the dreary new production — still, the reason to visit the Met’s new Tosca is Karita Mattila’s bravura if wrongheaded interpretation of the title role. »

06 Oct 2009

Imogen Cooper's Birthday at the Wigmore Hall

This wasn't an ordinary concert but something very special. The Wigmore Hall was honouring Imogen Cooper on her 60th birthday. She is greatly loved here, both as soloist and as partner in song recitals. The atmosphere was electric. The house was packed, with many famous pianists and singers in the audience. It was a historic occasion, but it felt like a party among friends. »

04 Oct 2009

Il trovatore in San Francisco

SFO general director David Gockley has a mania for developing new audiences — last year The Bonesetter’s Daughter was aimed at enticing the Asian American community into the opera house, and Porgy and Bess encouraged the African American community to cross the threshold.  »

03 Oct 2009

Tristan und Isolde more rooted in tradition than meets the eye

Over 100 years ago, Adolphe Appia sketched designs for Tristan und Isolde that have influenced theatre design from Alfred Roller to Wieland Wagner. Appia's vision came to life on stage at the Royal Opera House this week. This new production has far deeper roots in tradition than its detractors realize.  »

30 Sep 2009

San Francisco Opera: Puccini's Il Trittico and Verdi's Il Trovatore

The complexity of staging Puccini's evening of three one-act operas, Il Trittico, has kept this masterpiece from appearing on opera stages as frequently as, say, Turandot or Tosca.  »

24 Sep 2009

Incomparable Schubert — Goerne at the Wigmore Hall Part 2

This programme of mostly solemn, elevated music based around songs on such themes as Evening, Death and Immutability was part of Matthias Goerne’s ‘Journey with Schubert’ during which he is recording the songs on eleven CDs and presenting the series in recitals all over the world. If the singing on this occasion is anything to go by, these recordings are set to become the standard to which other singers should aspire. »

20 Sep 2009

Goerne sings Schubert at the Wigmore Hall

When Matthias Goerne sings, it’s never superficial. Lieder is a genre that needs almost as much engagement from listeners as from performers. “It's like a church in there”, someone said to me about the Wigmore Hall. “They’re really listening”.  »

20 Sep 2009

Die schöne Müllerin by Mark Padmore, Wigmore Hall

Schubert’s first song-cycle is a perfect choice with which to open a new concert season, and the Wigmore Hall was packed on Friday evening in anticipation of this recital by tenor Mark Padmore, much admired for the focus and concentration of his ‘story-telling’, and Paul Lewis, one of the most expressive and poetic of pianists today. »

20 Sep 2009

Haydn’s Le pescatrici at Bampton Classical Opera

Bampton Classical Opera have two areas of specialism: little-known gems of the late eighteenth-century and ‘opera in adversity’.  »

20 Sep 2009

Humour and horror — Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre at the ENO, London

A massive female figure fills the whole stage at the ENO for Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre, in this amazing production from La Fura del Bas. (Alex Ollé). This production is so inherently dramatic that it brings Ligeti's "anti-opera" onto a new level as theatre.art. .  »

15 Sep 2009

Return to the Origins — Chamber Opera in Crisis Times

Chamber opera is coming back after a period when it appeared to be confined to experimental works.  »

15 Sep 2009

Wigmore Hall Song Competition

‘It’s a personal choice’ / ‘Of course he won - he was the only one who sang songs’ / ‘I’ll be happy if anyone but the first one wins’ (he won) / ‘There’s only one possible choice - the third one’ (he came second) »

06 Sep 2009

Christof Loy speaks about the new Tristan und Isolde at the Royal Opera House, London.

“Opera has so much to give” says Christof Loy, whose new production of Tristan und Isoldeopens at the Royal Opera House on 29th September. This opera is so familiar that everyone assumes they know it. But Loy’s approach involves going straight back to the score, and to the inherent drama in the music. “I don’t like superficial distractions". »

06 Sep 2009

Aspen stages a Don to die for

“Can it be?”“It can’t!”“But it is; he looks just like him…” »

06 Sep 2009

Mahler and Ligeti at the Proms?

On the surface, the theme of this Prom seemed to be Sci Fi movies at the Proms. Both Ligeti's Atmosphères and Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra became huge hits when Stanley Kubrick used them in 2001 : A Space Odyssey. So how did Mahler's *Kindertotenlieder* fit in ?  »

06 Sep 2009

Bayreuth: Multi-layered, Profound "Parsifal"

The Wagner Festspiel loves to provoke. »

06 Sep 2009

Seattle humanizes Wagner’s Ring

In 2001, when Seattle Opera completed its current production of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen, it seemed the company had taken a step backward. In appearance the new Ring — the third full SO staging since Glynn Ross set out to make the city the American counterpart to Germany’s Bayreuth — was traditional.  »

06 Sep 2009

The Dream of Gerontius: Grant Park Music Festival, Chicago

For the eighteenth program of its seventy-fifth anniversary season the Grant Park Music Festival under the direction of its principal conductor Carlos Kalmar gave two performances of Sir Edward Elgar’s monumental oratorio for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, The Dream of Gerontius.  »

30 Aug 2009

Central City Opera 2009

Central City stages luminous Lucia There’s the sextet, the greatest “hit” in all of opera when Caruso was in the cast, and there’s the “Mad Scene,” that exercise in vocal acrobatics that brought new glory to bel canto when the opera was new in Naples in 1835.  »

30 Aug 2009

Fidelio at the Proms

Fidelio is not just any opera. But then, Beethoven is not just any composer. His only opera — unless one counts Leonore as a work in itself — confounds bureaucratic expectations.  »

30 Aug 2009

Manon Lescaut at the Festival Puccini di Torre del Lago

Each year, the tiny Tuscan village Torre del Lago hosts a festival dedicated to its favorite son, Giacomo Puccini. This year’s Puccini Festival (10 July - 30 August) featured a “new” Manon Lescaut (a co-production with Opera del Nice Theater), its premiere garnering standing ovations for Marcello Giordani and Martina Serafin and accolades for Alberto Veronesi, the artistic director of the Festival.  »

30 Aug 2009

Louis Andriessen De Staat at the Proms

De Staat is a seminally important work. So much modern music stems from it, not only “serious” classical music but progressive popular music too. It “is” music theatre, for it’s designed to be experienced live, the visual effect part of the action. »

23 Aug 2009

Zelmira in Pesaro

August is when Italians immerse themselves in the primal soup of all life. Hordes swarm to the Mediterranean shores and multitudes arrive in Pesaro on the Adriatic, where just then crowds of Rossinians from around the world arrive to partake of their primal operatic soup.  »

23 Aug 2009

Stars Shine at Glimmerglass

Everyone once in a while, we veteran opera-goers are privileged to see a promising artist give a break-out performance that announces a giant step forward into major stardom.  »

17 Aug 2009

Mozart and Gluck — Mixed Results at Santa Fe

It is never easy to revive a success. Audiences will remember the first run of a show and consciously or not, compare a revival with earlier favorable impressions.  »

17 Aug 2009

Sir Harrison Birtwistle: Mask of Orpheus at the Proms

What drives Harrison Birtwistle to Greek myth? Orpheus is a primal archetype. When he played his lyre he tamed wild beasts and made mountains move. But he suffered. He journeyed into Hades but could not bring Eurydice, his beloved, back to life. In some versions of the myth, his talent enraged the jealous who tore him apart. Yet even then, his head remained intact, still singing. He symbolizes the power of music, and the fate of an artist.  »

09 Aug 2009

Semiramide at Caramoor

You need three or, ideally, four top-flight bel canto specialists to do anything like justice to Rossini’s Semiramide, his last and grandest Italian score. Otherwise why go to the expense?  »

06 Aug 2009

On deception at Sferisterio Festival, Macerata, Italy

L’inganno is this year’s theme at the Sferisterio Festival in Macerata, Italy.  »

05 Aug 2009

Les Huguenots at Bard SummerScape 2009

Why — they always ask — why — present Les Huguenots?  »

02 Aug 2009

Paris: King Roger Goes Hollywood

Paris Opera seems to posit the question: Does anyone completely understand what Karol Szymanowski’s King Roger is about?  »

01 Aug 2009

‘Opera Noir’ Entertains at Santa Fe

Can a famously successful movie be made into an effective opera? A quick answer is: yes! »

29 Jul 2009

Schubert bounces along at Wigmore Hall

The performance of lieder is a partnership between singer and pianist. In May I heard Julius Drake redeem an indifferent recital by the sheer beauty of his playing. I’ve been listening to him for more than 15 years. He’s a favorite. So I was completely taken by surprise by this recital »

27 Jul 2009

An Evening at Père Lachaise [Or, Natalie Dessay Attempts Violetta]

A fine-sounding Santa Fe Opera orchestra, excellently conducted by Frédéric Chaslin, was barely into the haunting, delicate prelude to Act I of La traviata, when a funeral procession, wet umbrellas unfurled, arrived to wend its way though a stage full of big grey marble rectangular boxes, handsomely abstracted tomb shapes, soon to be the courtesan Violetta Valéry’s destination. So much for the Prelude to Act I. »

22 Jul 2009

Bought and Paid-for Magic — Bernstein Tahiti in Munich’s Cuvilliès Theater

There she is, in her inch or two of sarong, floating, floating…Oh, excuse me, where was I? »

21 Jul 2009

A knock-out Ariadne auf Naxos at Munich’s Bavarian State Opera Festival

There are rare times when a critic can just enjoy, and say “Wow!”  »

21 Jul 2009

Tosca at the Baths of Caracalla, Rome

Tosca is the quintessential Roman opera, with a plot located in three infamous landmarks of Rome, its 1900 premiere in Rome was bound to be enormously successful.  »

20 Jul 2009

Munich's Re-constructed Lohengrin

Were someone looking to assemble a musical Dream Team to thrill us to the core with Wagner’s Lohengrin, one would need look no further than the assembled forces currently on stage at Munich's Bavarian State Opera. »

19 Jul 2009

Alice Coote stars in the First Night of the BBC Proms 2009

The Proms reach people all over the world, bringing them together for a kind of international street party, celebrating a shared love of music. If the arts make us more human and humane, then the BBC Proms are a force for good.  »

19 Jul 2009

Festival Aix-en-Provence by Stéphan Lissner

The Aix Festival imagines itself one of Europe’s great festivals, defining itself as the crossroads of European culture.  »

19 Jul 2009

Götterdämmerung at Aix-en-Provence — A Human Symphony

This year’s program at the Aix-en-Provence Festival includes Götterdämmerung, the much-anticipated final installment of the Ring co-sponsored by Festival d’Aix-en-Provence and the Osterfestspiele Salzburg.  »

19 Jul 2009

Mozart Mistreated at Aix-en-Provence Festival

At the festival of Aix-en-Provence, now in its sixty-first year, the final installment of Wagner’s “Ring,” with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic, has hogged the spotlight.  »