Actus Tragicus, review

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/opera/6149883/Actus-Tragicus-review.html

Rusalka, Norwegian National Opera, Oslo

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/48548fb2-9ba0-11de-b214-00144feabdc0.html

Actus tragicus at the Festival Theatre

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/specials/edinburgh/article6823818.ece

MASSENET: Werther — Vienna 2000

Werther: Drame lyrique en 4 actes et 5 tableaux

Music composed by Jules Massenet. Libretto by Edouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann based on Die Leiden des jungen Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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”.

Aspen stages a Don to die for

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

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 AtmosphËres 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 ?

Bayreuth: Multi-layered, Profound “Parsifal”

The Wagner Festspiel loves to provoke.

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.

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.