Even with director Lydia Steier mangling Spontini’s ending, this is Paris Opera at its best. When the grisly corpses of Roman hero general, Licinius, and his main squeeze, vestal virgin (virgin in a euphemistic sense) heroine, Julia, emerged bloodied, suspended and...
Italian soprano, Carmen Giannattasio, embodied Minnie’s swaggering authority. When the first chords of Puccini’s opera set in the Californian gold rush – La fanciulla del West – rang out in Bologna you could be forgiven for thinking you had turned up at a...
This was a bizarre interpretation of Verdi’s masterpiece but American soprano Emily Pogorelc nailed the role of Violetta. Curtains for Violetta. In the final scene of Semperoper Dresden’s La Traviata, Violetta, Verdi’s tragic heroine, was to die alone. As...
If the squeals of little fish flying through the air, then sizzling in a frying pan – unborn children of the watching potential mother who refuses to bear them – seem an absurdist operatic turn-off, bear with me. Don’t tune out. Just yet. Fish are just one of many...
DiDonato’s voice is like listening to silver leaves falling gently into a stream. Joyce DiDonato went down a bomb in Teatro Real Madrid’s Theodora. Actually, she made a bomb. Brown Semtex sticks, wirey colour-coded connector things, gaffer tape, handled with...
Kurt Weill’s timeless 1947 opera was a smart choice for a music school production. Frost in Florida? After hurricanes, folk in Miami seemed battened down for anything. But scrub global warming oxymoronic headlines – ‘Global Warming Brings Big Freeze to Sunbelt State’...
Written during Brezhnev’s “Great Stagnation”, the work is heavily charged with dissident political satire. Great place Zürich. In the Opernhaus bar, before Alfred Schnittke’s rarely performed (that’s a bit of an understatement! - Ed.) opera, Life with an...
On Site Opera's production of Lucidity is proof that the opera medium can tell a story of common experience in a more impactful way than any other. Lucidity. Clearly going to be different. Dave Eggar, cellist in the five-piece American Modern Ensemble orchestra wore a...
Bucharest has a strong operatic gene pool. But it could do so much better if it forged closer links with other European opera houses. Two soldiers stood impassive guard outside Bucharest Opera House in the evening dusk. Could have been extras left over from last...
The festival offers a complete experience for nerds and first timers alike. As Pagliacci took his curtain call at the end of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s corpse-strewn masterpiece, his mum, immediately in front of me, plonk centre Row C in Wexford’s National Opera...
Scottish Opera flew into Manhattan to mark the opening night of their co-production with New York’s Met of Argentinian composer, Osvaldo Golijov’s opera, Ainadamar. A proud moment for Scot Op. A co-pro with the Met is a resounding endorsement of the...
The Met orchestra struck up The Star-Spangled Banner. It is a venerated tradition to sing the American national anthem – adopted in the US as recently as 1931 – at the opening of the Met season. The Lincoln Center’s 3,800 capacity crowd rose as one and sang...