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...
The focal point of Maria Stuarda, Gaetano Donizetti’s opera premiered at la Scala, Milan, in 1835, is the exchange between Queen Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots at a contrived meeting on the purlieu of Fotheringhay Castle, Norfolk. Discount, for a moment,...
The Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux dominates its surroundings. So it should. It has stood majestically, as the link between the medieval cité and the northern quartiers which blossomed in the 19th century, since 1778. The architect, Victor Luis, gave his provincial...
The production of Alban Berg’s opera, Wozzeck, playing at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, is sensational, mind-bending, ground-breaking. As ground-breaking as Berg’s confrontational atonal style was when it burst into an unsuspecting, post-romantic world in...
KIEV, UKRAINE – SEPTEMBER 24, 2016: Independence Square – Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kiev, Ukraine. My lunch companion pulled two Israeli IWI Jericho 541 handguns from his briefcase and plonked them on the bench. “What do you think? Needed in Donbas, you know”. Bloody...
Santa’s right arm drew back, then delivered a powerful haymaker between Rudolph’s antlers. The festive pair, locked in sudden unseasonal animosity, tumbled onto the shiny, sleet-soaked sidewalk of East 33rd Street, close to Manhattan’s Greely Square Park. Moments...
Last Saturday I heard Lise Davidsen, the 32-year-old Norwegian lyric-dramatic soprano, sing her debut role at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Lisa, in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades. She started the afternoon a relative unknown. By curtain call she held...
“I’m an Angel, First Class – how’ya doin”? I am behind stage at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco, touring the set of Jake Heggie’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”, a brave – brave? What am I talking about? – heroically risky remake of the beloved James Stewart...
San Francisco Opera’s Christmas offering, Englebert Humperdinck’s 1893 Hansel and Gretel, ain’t no traditional fairy tale. This co-production with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden plays up serious social themes illuminated by Herr Humperdinck in a libretto by...
Philip Glass, the minimalist American composer, fills opera houseswith the same facility as his British ritualistic counterpart, Sir HarrisonBirtwhistle empties them. The sell-out run at New York’s Metropolitan Opera ofhis 1984 creation, Akhnaten, an opera...
I tried. Honestly, I really made an effort. I read the synopsis twice before the performance at London’s Coliseum. I know the work of English composer, Sir Harrison Birtwhistle, is “difficult”. I’ve savoured Gawain and The Minotaur in the past. So,...
The Rest is Opera:
Making opera fun for those of us who ain’t aficianados!
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