Well, maybe it wasn’t an opera house, but it was somewhere to go for opera beyond your living room. It was festive indeed to join a few hundred diehard aficionados…
Author: Michael Milenski
ROF Streams Rossini’s
La cambiale di matrimonio
The Rossini festival of Rossini’s hometown, Pesaro, streams the premiere of its new production of La cambiale di matrimonio, Rossini’s second opera on August 8 (and briefly “on demand” after).
Salzburg Elektra premiere to be streamed
Stage director Krzysztof Warlikowski offers a happy ending, he hints, to Richard Strauss’ monumental tragedy Elektra at the Salzburg Festival, streamed live at its premiere on August 1 from the Felsenreitscchule at 5 PM Central European Time.
The Two Summer Festivals That Can
Against all odds the festivals of Salzburg and Rossini’s Pesaro are forging ahead this summer with real, live opera, though the limited programs and scarcity of tickets may discourage us from journeying to Austria or Italy in August. Would that we could!
La PÈrichole in Marseille
The most notable of all PÈricholes of Offenbach’s sentimental operetta is surely the legendary Hortense Schneider who created the role back in 1868 at Paris’ ThÈ‚tre des VarietÈs. Alas there is no digital record.
EugËne OnÈguine in Marseille
A splendid 1997 provincial production of Tchaikovsky’s take on Pushkin’s Bryonic hero found its way onto a major ProvenÁal stage just now. The historic OpÈra Municipal de Marseille possesses a remarkable acoustic that allowed the Pushkin verses to flow magically through Tchaikovsky’s ebullient score.
Parsifal in Toulouse
AurÈlien Bory, director of a small, avant garde theater company in Toulouse, staged a spellbinding Parsifal at the ThÈ‚tre du Capitole, Toulouse’s famed Orchestre National du Capitole in the pit — FYI the Capitole is Toulouse’s city hall, the opera house is a part of it.
Parsifal in Palermo
Richard Wagner chose to finish his Good Friday opera while residing in Sicily’s Palermo, partaking of the natural splendors of its famed verdant basin, the Conca d’Oro, and reveling in the golden light of its surreal Monreale cathedral.
I Capuleti e i Montecchi in Rome
Shakespearean sentiments may gracefully enrich Gounod’s Romeo et Juliet, but powerful Baroque tensions enthrall us in the bel canto complexities of Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Conductor Daniele Gatti’s offered a truly fine bel canto evening at Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera introducing a trio of fine young artists.
Aix Roars Back
After the propitious inauguration of Pierre Audi’s management of the Aix Festival in 2019 came the pandemic. The 2020 festival went up in Covid flames. The 2021 festival roars again…