There’s a lot to be said for lowered expectations. After last
fall’s cramped, over-busy staging of Das Rheingold, I was
prepared for a rough night at Die Walk¸re—and enjoyed the
occasion very much, the staging, the direction, most of the singing, even the
costumes.
Category: Performances
Die Walk¸re, Metropolitan Opera
Houston makes sense — and music — of Ariadne
Ariadne auf Naxos, the next major endeavor of the Richard Strauss/Hugo von Hofmannsthal collaboration after Der Rosenkavalier in 1911, has been a special challenge for American opera companies.
The Damnation of Faust, ENO
Terry Gilliam was one of the forces behind Monty Python, the popular British TV comedy of the 1970’s. His fans will flock in droves to his version of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust at the ENO, London.
Anne Sofie von Otter, Wigmore Hall
For the second time in a matter of just a few weeks, the Wigmore Hall
audience were treated to an evening of seventeenth-century song and dance.
Rigoletto, New York
Rigoletto is the perfect opera. Even Verdi, who wrote so many
wonderful scores, never created anything more flawless.
Sumeida’s Song
It has long been my belief that the problems of the planet would be resolved
(or move on to their next stage) if only the folk of every ethnicity (nation,
faith, historic minority, tribe) would devote their energy to creating
opera—and perhaps theater or dance—out of its musical and mythical
traditions.
The Magic Flute, Manitoba
It’s hard to go wrong with The Magic Flute. Mozart’s
final opera contains every audience-pleasing feature in spades: beautiful
music, a fairy tale story, romance, laughter, villains, heroes/heroines, and
for most — a happy ending.
Minnesota Opera rescues Herrmann work
There’s more Byron than BrontÎ in Bernard Herrmann’s 1951
Wuthering Heights.
Otello, Carnegie Hall
By the time he emerged from retirement with Otello, his
twenty-seventh opera, at 73, there wasn’t much Giuseppe Verdi
didn’t know about how to make an orchestra do his bidding, set the mood
of each line of a good story, piling excitement on excitement and letting the
tension mutate to something gentler at the right times in order to make the
outburst to follow the more demoniac.