There are intractable conventions at Bayreuth. There are no supertitles. Parsifal is done every year (though it was not during WWII due to ideological incompatibility). There is no applause after…
Author: Michael Milenski
Adelaide di Borgogna in Pesaro
Adelaide di Borgogna was the wife of Lothario, king of Italy, who was assassinated in the year 950 A.D. Rossini set the eponymous dramma per musica by one Giovanni Schmidt…
Aureliano in Palmira in Pesaro
The year is 1813, Rossini is 22 years old. He has had two huge successes in Venice — L’italiana in Algeri, his first big comedy (there were seven smaller ones…
Eduardo e Cristina in Pesaro
Rossini’s twenty-eighth opera in a new critical edition by the Fondazione Rossini — no actual Rossini autograph exists — in a new production by Italian stage director Stefano Poda. A…
Films d’Opéra in Entrecasteaux
Festival International Film d’Opéra d’Entrecasteaux (FIFOE) debuts this September in this small village nestled among the vineyards in the hills of Provence. The village is Entrecasteaux, famed for its farmhouse…
Wozzeck at the Aix Festival
Finally! Cancelled in 2003 by a strike, postponed in 2020 by Covid, Alban Berg’s expressionist masterpiece Wozzeck has just been given 5 performances at Aix’s Grand Théâtre de Provence —…
Cosi fan tutte at the Aix Festival
The Aix Festival was founded 75 summers ago as an altar to the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (in French it is pronounced Mose-art). This year Cosi is up again…
Le Prophète and Picture a Day Like This at the Aix Festival
Giacomo Meyerbeer was born near Berlin as Jacob Beer. Early in his professional life he joined his maternal grandfather’s given name, Meyer, to his father’s family name, taking on the…
Ballets Russes at the Aix Festival
Not to be confused with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes or Wassily de Basil’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, it was Igor Stravinsky’s trilogy of ballet scores created for Paris based,…
L’Opéra de Quat’Sous at the Aix Festival
That’s The Three Penny Opera. While four “sous” wouldn’t get you in the door, the price of admission was far less than the usual offering at this lofty altar to…