Category: Performances

Well into the 1960s, ‘provincial theaters’ were the backbone of Italy’s operatic culture.

David Agler must be feeling a trifle unlucky. Having in 2005 taken over the reins of a flourishing, internationally renowned opera festival, with a stylish new opera house in the planning and the Irish economy booming, his hopes must been high; but in the event the Canadian’s first few years as Artistic Director of the Wexford Festival Opera have been far from plain-sailing.

The roles Richard Strauss composed for his “chorus” of Five Serving Maids in Elektra — all that remains in the opera of the commentator chorus in Sophocles’ tragedy — are short but arduous.

Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s early opera Ernani have become relatively infrequent primarily because of the difficulties of casting the work requiring four demanding roles.

Exchanging the stage of The Royal Opera House — where he is currently
performing the role of His Highness in Tchaikovsky’s fairy-tale opera,
The Tsarina’s Slippers —

Encountering Frankfurt Opera’s staging of Leoni’s L’Oracolo and Puccini’s Le Villi, I was reminded of that old saw about the German weather.

It is hard to know where to start to adequately laud Netherlands Opera’s witty new La Fanciulla del West.

The one thing certain about the judgment of history is that history will change its mind.

Il Corsaro, the Verdi rarity currently on display at Z¸rich Opera, is the best of both possible worlds.

The Tales of Hoffmann is a cruel piece, for all the wit of the macabre tales on which it is based and the sparkle the dying Offenbach put into his last and grandest score.