Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s lyric tragedy Médée premiered in 1694 with its dedicatee, Louis XIV, in attendance. The five-act libretto adapted by Thomas Corneille from Euripides’ play retells one of the most…
Author: Andrew Moravcsik
Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at Princeton University. Also appointments at Technical University of Munich (Germany) and European University Institute (Italy).
L’amore dei tre re at La Scala, Milan
Following its 1913 world premiere at the Teatro alla Scala, Italo Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre re (The Love of Three Kings) immediately entered the standard repertory both in Italy and…
Salome at the Staatsoper Hamburg
The recent production of Richard Strauss’s Salome at the Staatsoper Hamburg, one of Germany’s major companies, has received rapturous reviews. Its main virtue is the assumption of the title role…
Die Frau ohne Schatten at Neuköllner Oper
One often hears that Berlin has three opera houses. In fact, it has many more. Among the most engaging is the Neuköllner Oper. Situated in a funky Berlin neighborhood, it…
Eslon Hindundu’s Chief Hijangua in Berlin
Eslon Hindundu’s new opera Chief Hijangua, the first ever composed by a Namibian, premiered in Windhoek last fall. Last weekend, I attended the third performance of its European premiere at…
Das Rheingold at Ravello Festival
The 150th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen will arrive in 2026. Perhaps the most intriguing commemorative initiative is an effort to reconstruct the precise playing, singing and staging…
A Tale of Two Lucias
Most European summer opera attendees head either to a mass outdoor event such as Verona, Orange and Bregenz, or to an exclusive spot such as Salzburg, Bayreuth, Glyndebourne, or Aix-en-Provence.…
Rossini’s The Barber of Seville at the Princeton Festival
Each summer the Princeton Festival stages an opera, this year an exuberant production of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia under the tent on the Morven Museum Grounds. Though it is…
Tannhäuser at Salzburg
Tannhäuser made the young Richard Wagner’s reputation. Charles Baudelaire, Franz Liszt, Oscar Wilde, Queen Victoria and other luminaries became obsessed with Wagner’s portrayal (and subtle critique) of the struggle between…
Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma
In his final years, celebrated film and opera director Franco Zeffirelli came to be closely associated with the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, which shared his traditionalist view of opera staging.…