Baden’s Flute Goes Barefoot in the Park

For its world class Easter Festival, Baden-Baden mounted a Die Zauberflˆte that owed more to the grey penitential doldrums of Lent than to the unbridled jubilance of re-birth.

Bonjour M. Gauguin in Berkeley

Once Berkeley Opera, renamed West Edge Opera, this enterprising company offers the Bay Area’s only serious alternative to corporate opera, to wit Bonjour M. Gauguin.

Mahler Lieder, Wigmore Hall

In the first of pianist Julius Drake’s three-part series,
‘Perspectives’, our gaze was directed at Gustav Mahler’s eclectic musical
responses to human experiences: from the trauma and distress of anguished love
to the sweet contentment of true friendship, from the agonised introspection of
the artist to the diverse dramas of human interaction.

Cinderella Goes to the Opera

The Los Angeles opera company marketed its spring production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola as Cinderella though there is no opera by that name. The libretto of La Cenerentola is not the Cinderella story we know.

Music from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“German poet, dramatist and novelist. One of the most important literary and cultural figures of his age, he was recognized during his lifetime for his accomplishments of almost universal breadth. However, it is his literary works that have most consistently sustained his reputation, and that also serve to demonstrate most clearly his many-faceted relationship to music. . . .

“Culture: the cement that binds Europe together”

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-13-280_en.htm?locale=en

Die Walk¸re, Paris

The Paris OpÈra has not staged a full Ring Cycle since 1957, but its current season will conclude with a correction of this grand operatic gap.

Manon Lescaut, Washington National Opera

Washington National’s 2012-2013 season continues this spring with a production of Giacomo Puccini’s first successful opera.

Murder in the Cathedral at San Diego Opera

Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968) wrote more than fifteen operas, of which almost none are staged today.

The Firework-Maker’s Daughter, London

The Opera Group’s latest event, The Firework-maker’s Daughter by David Bruce and Glyn Maxwell is currently on tour and arrived at the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Theatre last night (3 April 2013).