The opening tableau of Penny Woolcock’s new production depicts deep waters with rays of sun hitting the surface; in the murky blue depths, three harnessed acrobats glide down to the sea bed and back up again.
Category: Reviews
Valencia Ring: Siegfried.
Siegfried is a challenging opera to stage effectively, and the presentation by La Fura dels Baus in Zubin Mehta’s new Ring cycle merits attention on various counts.
Festive Concert with Jessye Norman
It was more the ruins than the remnants of a once-great voice that Jessye Norman brought to Israel’s new, 6500-seat outdoor opera theater at the foot of historic Masada Mountain.
Nabucco at Masada
Israel Opera Nabucco includes three Va pensiero’s It’s apocrypha, of course, but legend has it that since its 1843 premiere at La Scala audiences have wanted an encore of the chorus Va pensiero when Verdi’s Nabucco is on stage.
Faust in San Francisco
Faust has long since left the French repertory to enter the international repertory, meaning that, like Disneyland, it has been absorbed into diverse cultures where it discovers new resonances.
Le Nozze di Figaro, Royal Opera House
Detailed and precise, but never fussy, David McVicar’s thought-provoking production of Le Nozze di Figaro is ‘busy’ from the opening rushing semi-quavers of the overture.
I Gioielli della Madonna, New York
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari, son of an Italian mother and a German father, was born
in Venice but acclaimed only when he took his operas to Germany, where he
became quite popular during the first decades of the twentieth century.
Bliss, Tosca and La Sonnambula at Opera Australia
Opera Australia regularly commission new work. Usually serious subjects
drawn from notable Australian literature or dealing with an event or hero from
Australian history.
La Damnation de Faust in Modern Guise at Lyric Opera of Chicago
During its recently concluded season Lyric Opera of Chicago presented two
musical pieces based on the theme of “Faust.”
First Opera in 3D — Carmen, Royal Opera House
Everyone knows the tunes from Bizet’s Carmen even if they don’t know it’s an opera. Now the Royal Opera House, London, is making the world’s best known opera into the world’s first 3D opera film.