It is hard to say which was more impressive just now in Aix’s tiny Jeu de Paume theater — the musical edition of the Monteverdi masterpiece realized by conductor Leonardo…
Year: 2022
Mother, Sister, Daughter: Musica Secreta create a community of sisters through spiritual song
Musica Secreta’s co-director, Laurie Stras, relishes an archival detective hunt. The ensemble’s 2019 recording, From Darkness into Light, presented the fruits of Stras’s discovery of what she described as ‘seventeen…
Moïse et Pharaon in Aix
Rossini at the hand of a non-Rossinian, stage director Tobias Kratzer, to the baton of a real Rossinian, conductor Michele Mariotti. At the downbeat it was pure Rossini, Mo. Mariotti…
Heinrich Schütz: David & Salomon – selections from the Psalms of David and Song of Solomon
This first foray into the music of Heinrich Schütz from Les Cris de Paris is an absolute winner, a superb addition to the composer’s discography of more than 100 recordings.…
Il Viaggio, Dante in Aix
A world premiere, the tenth opera of 67 year old, prolific French composer Pascal Dusapin in a production that will move on to Paris, Saarbrücken and Luxembourg. In the staging…
Hasse’s Antonio e Cleopatra at the Buxton International Festival
Like Handel before him, Johann Hasse (some 14 years Handel’s junior) left his native Germany to get some Italianate polish. His first major work was the serenata Antonio e Cleopatra,…
Enoch Arden: a new recording of Richard Strauss’s melodrama from Christopher Kent and Gamal Khamis
Melodrama: literally, the joining of music (melos) and drama. The word has various connotations, though, relating to genre, method and expression. Denoting a work for narrator and instruments, and sometimes…
La donna del lago at the Buxton International Festival
Rossini’s operas for Naples, where he was music director of the Royal theatres from 1815 to 1821 represent an important strand in the development of his opera. There he had…
“Resurrection” in Aix
Gustav Mahler himself once offered a program guide to his magnificent symphonic resurrection, later renounced. Just now at the Aix Festival stage director Romeo Castellucci has tried again, and maybe…
Chiaroscuro expressionism: Keith Warner’s Otello is revived at the Royal Opera House
Keith Warner’s Otello is a crucible of darkness and light. The minimalism of Warner’s conception and design seemed even more striking to me during the opening night of this second…