Having set up his themes in the previous instalments of the Ring in the Royal Opera’s past two seasons, Barrie Kosky relaxes a little in Siegfried, the cycle’s third part,…
Author: Curtis Rogers
Vivaldi’s Provocative First Opera Given a Sober Interpretation at Venice
Ottone in villa was Vivaldi’s first opera, although premiered not in his native Venice, but at nearby Vicenza in 1713. The title character, Otho, is one of the four Roman…
A Critically Honest Glance of Life in a Venetian Square from Genoa in Wolf-Ferrari’s Il campiello
The ‘little square’ of Wolf-Ferrari’s charming comic opera is one in Venice, as peopled by local characters in a mid-18th century play by Goldoni. It’s as though one of the domestic…
Chelsea Opera Group’s Mascagni Double Bill is a Wonderful Display of Tenor Vocalism
Mascagni’s breakthrough opera Cavalleria rusticana is often now paired with something other than ‘Pag’, but rarely with his own later essay in verismo, Silvano (1895). It’s a similarly terse drama…
A Musically Attractive Account of Leo Duarte’s New Completion of a Fragmentary Handel Opera
In between writing the operas Poro and Ezio, based on libretti by Metastasio, which was unusual for Handel despite the Italian’s being the foremost librettist of the age, the composer…
Christof Loy Brings Modernity and Simplicity to Schreker’s Mediaeval Folktale Der Schatzgräber
Der Schatzgräber is one of a series of operas which Schreker wrote in the first decades of the 20th century with an esoteric, folktale narrative, usually in a mediaeval setting.…
A Truly Gripping, Psychological Account of Korngold’s Violanta at Deutsche Oper Berlin
A Fancy by John Dowland, played on the lute alone, followed by the Prelude from Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra Opus 6, set the scene for this tale of lust, guilt,…
A Pared Back Staging at Frankfurt Allows the Characters to Bring Out the Baroque Vivacity of Steffani’s Amor Vien Dal Destino
If Agostino Steffani is remembered at all, it is probably for working at the Hanoverian court at the time when Handel was also briefly employed there, in 1710-11, after his…
A Masterful Recreation of Lully’s Atys at Versailles Bridges the Contemporary and the Baroque
Although Lully’s operas are still not widely seen – certainly not outside of France, despite their fundamental part in the development of 17th century music drama – Atys (1676) fares…
Christophe Rousset completes his Lully opera cycle in refined form with Cadmus et Hermione
Reaching the end of his remarkable cycle of Lully operas (in recordings, with performances also usually presented alongside them) Christophe Rousset comes almost to the beginning of that body of…