Author: Gary Hoffman

In 1704, 11 years after its first performance in 1693 before the royal court
of Louis XIV, and 17 years after the death of Lully — and at a time when
the relative merits of respective French and Italian aesthetics were constantly
and fiercely being debated — Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s MÈdÈe was
condemned by the ‘Lullist’ faction, who were determined to defend
their leader’s guardianship of the tragÈdie en musique, as an
‘abomination’: hard, dry and characterised by excess.

Palm Beach Opera opened its new season with the opera that began it all, La Traviata.

For the first of her two February recitals at the Wigmore Hall, the
Argentinean mezzo-soprano Bernarda Fink was joined by the Hugo Wolf Quartett in
an eclectic, Italian-themed programme in which singer and instrumentalists
sculpted diverse and beautiful musical vistas and communicated a remarkably
coherent, shared vision.

This concert was part of a greater weekend of concerts at the Southbank
Centre looking at Paris during the second and third decades of the twentieth
century, the weekend itself part of the year-long Rest is Noise
season.

Kasper Holten’s directorial debut in the Royal Opera House begins with
silence.