WNO proves a point with Handel’s Jeptha

They say that there’s nothing worse than a musically-obtuse staging of any opera to put a rookie opera-goer off a composer (or even opera itself) for life.

Vladimir Jurowski, LPO

Vladimir Jurowski said all the right things during a brief address at the opening of the concert. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony should not be regarded as the climax of the performance, but as the fifth movement in a single work, whose theme was human suffering and the strength of the human spirit, never quashed by the former.

Simon Boccanegra Opens Rome Opera 2012-13 Season

http://www.operatoday.com/content/2012/11/rome_opera_open.php

Rome Opera Opens New Season

Yesterday, Conductor Riccardo Muti opened the Rome Opera, where he is “honorary conductor for life,” with a gala presentation of Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra.

Madame Butterfly, LA Opera

A beautiful, blingless Butterfly. How else to describe the pleasures of four glorious voices singing Puccini’s heart breaking, passionate melodies without igniting romantic sparks?

Haydn and Strauss, LPO

Haydn’s settings of the Mass ought to be heard incessantly, in churches and in the concert hall.

Bizet’s Carmen at ENO

Drawing on the dark viciousness and bitter malevolence of Prosper MÈrimÈe’s ethnographical novella, Calixto Bieito’s Carmen rejects any notion of flamboyant exoticism and alluring eroticism, and presents us instead with a sordid twilight zone of sexual violence and brutal malice.

RomÈo et Juliette by Arizona Opera

French composer Charles Gounod wrote his five-act opera† RomÈo et Juliette† to a libretto that Jules Barbier and Michel CarrÈ based on William Shakespeare’s† Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet.

Tosca (Postscript) in San Francisco

Extraordinary diva, Angela Gheorghiu pulled out of opening night after act one. It was news when she made it to the end of the second performance. Here is what happened at the third performance.

Joan of Arc as Atheist Heroine

Jeanne D’Arc—Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna, the last stage work of the German composer Walter Braunfels, documents a passage in music history that has only recently begun to break through the surface.