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,...
Friday, 25th October, was World Opera Day, a collaboration among Opera America, Opera Europa and Opera Latinoamérica. Festivities at the annual Wexford Festival Opera, held since 1951 in Ireland’s south eastern corner, were already in full swing. There was even a...
“Is this a handbag that I see before me”? Excellent question, Thane of Glamis. You can get around to the bloody dagger stuff later in the plot. Imagine. Here you are, Macbeth, Scene I, wandering across a blasted heath with your pal Banquo, minding your own business...
Knickers in Philadelphia were missing. AWOL. Not a shred. Potential disaster. In Sergei Prokofiev’s 1918 opera, The Love for Three Oranges, knickers are essential, the fulcrum against which the lever of the plot is applied. No knickers, no reason for the...
Hamlet isn’t brooding on the battlements in Denmark. He’s in the Hague; starring in a new production from Oper2Day, the Dutch “new energy from old sources” opera company. Its premiere was broadcast live...
The key to Jules Massenet’s opera Manon – first performed at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, in 1884 – is the portrayal of the young Manon Lescaut, when she arrives at an Amiens coaching inn during the first scene. If she is miscast – the wrong key – the plot of...
A defining Gala performance of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess kicked off New York Metropolitan Opera Company’s Season at the Lincoln Center on Monday. But on Tuesday the glitter was off the Gala. Can’t ignore the elephant that had just left the stage. Placido...
“Glimmerglass”. The name of the opera festival held annually in Otsego county, upstate New York, near Cooperstown, sounds a siren call. It’s not a real location, which only adds to the allure. Cooperstown is real enough, home to the Baseball Hall of Fame and a totem...