It is incredibly unfashionable nowadays to stage opera straightforwardly. Welsh National Opera’s recent lavish staging of Otello prompted a dismissive reception from the critics.
Category: Reviews
L’elisir d’amore in San Francisco
There are remnants of snobbery in San Francisco that are happiest when San Francisco Opera
associates itself with the likes of Vienna State Opera and Covent Garden, and left positively
frightened at the idea of a production from Opera Colorado/Fort Worth Opera/et al. on the War
Memorial Opera House stage.
Muti’s La Traviata
EMI owns this recording, so if pride dictates they repackage it in the “Great Recordings of the Century” series, a dissenter shouldn’t moralize.
Ernani and I Capuletti e I Montecchi on Dynamic DVD
Both these performances come from mid-2005. Teatro Regio di Parma presented the Ernani in May of that year; August saw I Capuletti e I Montecchi on stage at the Festival della Valle d’Itria di Martina Franca.
Andrew Lloyd Webber — A Classical Tribute
Countless must be the number of true opera fans who have heard well-meaning acquaintances say, “Oh I just love opera! Especially Phantom of the Opera.”
The Pearl Fishers at Lyric Opera of Chicago
The current revival of Georges Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers at Lyric Opera of Chicago (seen 25 October) brings together an exceptionally strong cast.
Houston brushes up its Shakespeare
In 1830, three years after the death of Beethoven and two after Schubert’s untimely demise, Berlioz, 27, dazzled the world with his phantasmagoric — perhaps drug-inspired — Symphonie fantastique.
Boris Godunov at San Francisco Opera
As performed just now by the San Francisco Opera Mussorgsky’s initial (1869), seven scene version of Boris Godunov revealed itself a finished masterpiece.
Rusalka and La tragedie de Carmen by English Touring Opera
Of their two tours per year, English Touring Opera tends to channel the majority of the budget into the Spring season, and the Autumn tour – despite a focus in recent years on some high-quality Baroque chamber works, which lend themselves well to the size of the venues around the UK which the company visits – can be rather noticeably the poor relation.
Elektra at Royal Opera House
“Opera directing is very different to theatre directing”, says Charles Edwards, director of Elektra at the Royal Opera House this season. “It has to be the music that motivates you”. For this production, he works with Mark Elder, “an extraordinarily theatrically-minded conductor who sees theatre in everything he hears”.