There come nights in the opera season where gesamtkunstwerke won’t do — enough of epic masterpieces and supreme lyric outpourings of the human spirit!
Category: Reviews
Frankfurt: Thinking Inside the Box
My heart didn’t exactly leap in joyful anticipation as I entered the Frankfurt Opera and saw the Arabella pre-set on stage: a big, shallow, white box.
No Home for Heroes at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna — Pierre Audi’s new production of Handel’s Partenope.
Handel operas are like London buses — you wait for ages and then 3 come along together.
Massenet’s Don Quichotte at San Diego Opera
Ferrucio Furlanetto apparently loves the temperate climes of San Diego in California’s equivalent of late winter.
Kurt Weill’s Der Kuhhandel at Volks Oper Wien
The Kurt Weill-composed operetta Arms and the Cow premiered in 1935 under the title A Kingdom for a Cow, according to Erwin Berger’s booklet essay for this DVD of a 2007 VolksOper Vien staging of David Pountney’s production.
Fritz Wunderlich — The Legend
Some opera aficionados who take a look at the contents of this two-CD Fritz Wunderlich collection from Profil might shake their heads in bemused wonder: the German lyric tenor as Turridu, let alone Pinkerton and Rodolfo?
Donizetti’s Don Pasquale from the Ravenna Festival
The CEO of the Ravenna Festival, one Cristina Mazzavillano Muti, understandably takes top billing at the top of this DVD booklet’s three – count ’em, 3! – pages of credits for the Festival, not counting the single page of credits for the production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale itself.
Chicago’s Lyric brings life to Tristan
Superlatives were in short supply when the curtain fell on Tristan und Isolde at Chicago Lyric Opera on January 27.
Magic Flute at ENO
‘Back by popular demand’ claimed ENO’s publicity material for the
21-year-old production which had its supposed swan-song last season – though it remains questionable whether the company ever really intended to get rid of it.
Die tote Stadt, Royal Opera House
Die tote Stadt is Korngold’s masterpiece in the old sense of the word, when a craftsman would produce a dazzling work to show the world what he could do. This is Korngold’s manifesto, so to speak.