The Pearl Fishers, ENO

Writing in a programme article to accompany this first revival of her 2010 production of Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, director Penny Woolcock remarks upon the opera’s ‘plethora of beautiful arias, duets, choral and orchestral music … and catchy tunes that spawn earworms’.

The Metropolitan Opera to cancel its Live in HD transmission of John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer scheduled for this fall

 

Britten: Owen Wingrave, Aldeburgh Music Festival

An ideal choice for this year’s Aldeburgh Music Festival, Britten’s Owen Wingrave. From a very early age, Britten was incensed by bullying and repression.

Show Boat in San Francisco

To be uncomplimentary about the current production of Show Boat at San Francisco Opera will surely provoke a summons to appear before the House Un-American Activities Commission.

Anna Prohaska, one of Europe’s most promising sopranos

Anna Prohaska sings Sister Constance in Poulenc’s Dialogues des
CarmÈlites
at the Royal Opera House. In the same month, she’s also in
London to sing a recital with Eric Schneider at the Wigmore Hall, and to sing
Henze with Sir Simon Rattle at the Barbican Hall.

La Traviata in San Francisco

La Traviata has hit the stage at San Francisco Opera every three to five years (even annually in some periods) since 1924. Surprises have been rare.

A Digital Orchestra for Opera? Purists Take (and Play) Offense

 

Ariadne auf Naxos trailer (The Royal Opera)

 

Opera Las Vegas Presents Stellar Barber of Seville

On June 6, 2014, Opera Las Vegas presented Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville with a cast drawn from the Metropolitan Opera and other major companies.

Il barbiere di Siviglia, Holland Park

The geographical and chronological transportation of Rossini’s famous
factotum from 18th-century Seville to 19th-century London
is director Oliver Platt’s most radical notion in this satisfying, if
somewhat straightforward, new production of Il barbiere di Siviglia
for Opera Holland Park.