Gaetano Donizetti’s first big hit opera is back at La Fenice in Venice, after an absence of 157 years. A spotlight focused on Anna Bolena’s retreating back as she walked in passive dignity towards her executioner. Then, slowly narrowed until only the rear of the...
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...
The Rest is Opera:
Making opera fun for those of us who ain’t aficianados!
Neal Goren’s small opera company always has something original to say. Last year it was the premiere of a Nadia Boulanger opera, La Ville Morte, in Athens and New York! Ambitious, moi? The master saw both of them! In June look out for San Giovanni Battista by the...
An exciting, newly minted, Ring Cycle from the ever-ambitious Regents Opera. The small opera company that could. Two complete Ring Cycles from February 9th – March 2nd. Carefully crafted orchestration will ring out in York Hall, Bethnal Green. Normally the province of...
Otto Schenk, who has died aged 94, was an Austrian actor and theatre director from another era. Lavishly traditional, he was known for his attention to detailed staging notes on the score. Where Wagner wrote ‘here be dragons’ dragons is what Schenk delivered, notably...
The Master is in mourning. His outing to the Glimmerglass opera festival in upstate New York in August has been scrubbed. One of his favourite calendar items, the festival is a showcase for up and coming artists and cutting-edge productions. He was particularly...
“Perhaps by some miraculous situation we can return in the Fall.” What? Not an optimistic assessment from Peter Gelb, General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera. At the Met’s online streaming Gala, as recently as 25th April, Gelb was upbeat about “meeting in...
Sir Peter Jonas, Director of English National Opera from 1985 – 1993 and Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich 1993 – 2006 has died. He was wild on and off stage. His productions of Wagner rendered traditionalists incandescent. He kept a “stink box” of poison pen letters from...
Sir Peter Jonas, Director of English National Opera from 1985 – 1993 and Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich 1993 – 2006 has died. He was wild on and off stage. His productions of Wagner rendered traditionalists incandescent. He kept a “stink box” of poison pen letters from...
Now 41 admin staff have been placed on furlough and may be paid off, the chorus and orchestra are in deep freeze and booked artists are champing at the bit. The Met’s already dodgy finances are now in tatters. Will the hocked Chagalls in the Met lobby be called in?...