Irrelohe. An orchestral orgy — triple winds, quadruple brass though six horns, two harps, organ, celeste, guitar, mandolins, an eighth player percussion battery plus tympani and strings. Libretto and music…
Author: Michael Milenski
“Family Secrets”* at the Opéra de Lyon (Rigoletto)
Rigoletto. Docudrama of a father whose wife dies in childbirth, raises daughter who falls in love with a selfish, debauched hoodlum. Show curtain is block apartment lighted windows. And they…
Werther in Marseille
The Opéra de Marseille assembled a fine cast to perform the Massenet masterpiece in a prize winning production from Nancy. Bordeaux tenor Thomas Bettinger poured his heart out as the…
Pelléas et Mélisande in Montpellier
A third staging of French stage director Benjamin Lazar’s poetic and sophisticated production (Malmö in 2017 and Karlsruhe in 2019), highly refined in Montpellier by an early music tenor as…
Werther in Monte-Carlo
A superb cast, an inspired maestro, an intimate theater, an operatic masterpiece (the eighteenth of Massenet’s thirty-six operas), Werther in Monte-Carlo was a thrilling bombardment of emotional crises. From the…
La Valkyrie in Marseille
Omicron roared through Marseille, civil authorities refused its opera house orchestra entry into the dangerously close confines of its pit. But sitting comfortably distanced on stage itself, this under appreciated…
Les Vêpres Siciliennes in Palermo
Ossia I Vespri Siciliani takes its name from the evening prayer to which the faithful are called by the ringing of bells. Specifically the bells of Verdi’s Sicilian vespers signal…
Kát’a Kabanova in Rome
The Opera di Roma marks the centenary of Janacek’s intimate domestic tragedy Kat’a Kabanova with a new cast for Richard Jones’ prize winning, 2019 Covent Garden production. Reportedly spell binding…
Cosi fan tutte in San Francisco
Cosi fan tutte (1790), the little sister of the Mozart Da Ponte trilogy, was mounted last night in the same set used by its older brother The Marriage of Figaro…
Fidelio in San Francisco
A superb cast, a fine production, inspired conducting, classy orchestra and a classy chorus, a wired audience — it was Fidelio last night at the War Memorial Opera House. To…