Dialogues des CarmÈlites is a magnificently anti-operatic opera.
Month: September 2011
Santa Fe Faust — Revisited
The distinguished soprano Patricia Racette once advised this observer, “If you are coming to the opera to review me, please attend the latest performance you can.” I knew what she meant.
Operas Based on French Literature
Here are operas based on French literature from Balzac, Hugo and beyond:
Les Troyens by La Fura dels Baus
When the opera opens, a chorus of Trojan is rejoicing that the Greeks have abandoned the war and gone home.
Prom 67: Beethoven, Mass in D major, op.123
I shall not beat about the bush: this was a great performance.
Glyndebourne’s Billy Budd
Hermann Melville wrote a poem called “Fragments of a Lost Gnostic Poem of the Twelfth Century”:
Ruhrtriennale’s Luminous Tristan
Bochum’s Jahrhunderthalle, a massive, re-purposed industrial building, seemed an unlikely location to contain and frame the transcendent, unbounded spiritual journey of Wagner’s masterpiece Tristan und Isolde.
New Injury Forces James Levine to Cancel Fall Performances
http://www.operatoday.com/documents/Levine_Met.pdf
Macbeth from Paris and Parma
Superstitions surround theatrical productions of Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy.