A massive female figure fills the whole stage at the ENO for Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre, in this amazing production from La Fura del Bas. (Alex OllÈ). This production is so inherently dramatic that it brings Ligeti’s “anti-opera” onto a new level as theatre.art. .
Category: Performances
Return to the Origins — Chamber Opera in Crisis Times
Chamber opera is coming back after a period when it appeared to be confined to experimental works.
Wigmore Hall Song Competition
‘It’s a personal choice’ / ‘Of course he won – he was the only one who sang songs’ / ‘I’ll be happy if anyone but the first one wins’ (he won) / ‘There’s only one possible choice – the third one’ (he came second)
Mahler and Ligeti at the Proms?
On the surface, the theme of this Prom seemed to be Sci Fi movies at the Proms. Both Ligeti’s AtmosphËres and Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra became huge hits when Stanley Kubrick used them in 2001 : A Space Odyssey. So how did Mahler’s *Kindertotenlieder* fit in ?
Seattle humanizes Wagner’s Ring
In 2001, when Seattle Opera completed its current production of Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen, it seemed the company had taken a step backward. In appearance the new Ring — the third full SO staging since Glynn Ross set out to make the city the American counterpart to Germany’s Bayreuth — was traditional.
The Dream of Gerontius: Grant Park Music Festival, Chicago
For the eighteenth program of its seventy-fifth anniversary season the Grant Park Music Festival under the direction of its principal conductor Carlos Kalmar gave two performances of Sir Edward Elgar’s monumental oratorio for soloists, chorus, and orchestra, The Dream of Gerontius.
Central City Opera 2009
Central City stages luminous Lucia
There’s the sextet, the greatest “hit” in all of opera when Caruso was in the cast, and there’s the “Mad Scene,” that exercise in vocal acrobatics that brought new glory to bel canto when the opera was new in Naples in 1835.
Christof Loy speaks about the new Tristan und Isolde at the Royal Opera House, London.
“Opera has so much to give” says Christof Loy, whose new production of Tristan und Isoldeopens at the Royal Opera House on 29th September. This opera is so familiar that everyone assumes they know it. But Loy’s approach involves going straight back to the score, and to the inherent drama in the music. “I don’t like superficial distractions”.