Santa Fe Opera staged another local premiere this summer with the welcome company addition of Antonín Dvořák and Jaroslav Kvapil’s splendid opera, Rusalka, directed by the acclaimed Sir David Pountney.…
Month: August 2023
Enigmatic Debussy Riches in New Mexico
Santa Fe Opera is to be applauded for including Debussy’s inscrutable masterpiece, Pelléas and Mélisande in this summer’s festival season. This important work is more admired than loved, and a…
Barry Kosky’s production of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites travels from Glyndebourne to the Proms
Francis Poulenc’s opera Dialogues des Carmélites retells the true story of the Martyrs of Compiègne who were executed on 17th July 1794, during the French Revolution, for refusing to comply…
PwC Ireland showcases sponsorship of Wexford Factory 2023
Opera singers Ami Hewitt and Maria Hughes performed at a cultural event in PwC Ireland’s Spencer Dock offices. Artists Maria and Ami have both been supported by the partnership between the Festival and…
Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha brings an iridescent glow to Strauss’s Four Last Songs at the Proms
Copland, Hindemith and Strauss are not obvious bedfellows. However, the focus on the 1940s from either side of the Atlantic made perfect sense for this annual Prom appearance of the…
Santa Fe Orfeo: Jumbled Journey to Meow Wolf
In Santa Fe Opera’s first ever production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, a funny thing happened on the way to Hades. Our hero seems to have wandered into an imaginative but perplexing…
Thrilling performances of Rachmaninov and Walton at the Proms
There’s a danger that a little-known work not previously performed in the UK may be all too quickly erased from memory when familiar works grab the listener’s attention, especially when…
Joel Frederiksen and Ensemble Phoenix Munich offer the lyric mastery of Walther von der Vogelweide
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the aesthetic and songs of courtly love travelled to Germany from Provence and northern France. Minnesinger, like their Romance counterparts, composed both the texts…
Anime Immortali: Franco Fagioli offers a portrait of Mozart and the castrato voice
Mozart probably isn’t the first composer whom one thinks of in association with eighteenth-century castrati. But, for over two decades – from Mitridate, re di Ponto K87/74a, written for the…
Opera Rara launch Donizetti Song Project at Wigmore Hall with Lawrence Brownlee & Carlo Rizzi
On Saturday 9 September, Opera Rara launch its Donizetti Song Project at Wigmore Hall with tenor Lawrence Brownlee and its Artistic Director Carlo Rizzi. Continuing its year-long celebration of Donizetti’s…