Category: Performances

Someone once called Handelís Italian cantata Apollo e Dafne a ìproto-operaî and itís easy to see why.

For some seasons now, ENO has expressed a commitment to reinforce the role of dance within opera.

Do you remember a moment when a piece, new to you, so engaged you that you immediately wanted to know more. . .or all about it?

An expedition against the famed warring women, the Amazons, ranking as Hercules’ ninth labor out the canonic twelve, provided the subject for the libretto by Antonio Salvi (not Giacomo Francesco Bussani, as hitherto misattributed) that Vivaldi set to music in 1723 as his own sixteenth operatic labor.

Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s guest appearance is an annual fixture at the Proms, and this year the work of choice was Verdi’s Macbeth, in a semi-staged performance on July 24th based on Richard Jones’s new production for this year’s Festival.

At this point in his career David Gockley has no need to prove himself. He did that with awesome success as general director of Houston Grand Opera for 33 years, during which he made that company a front runner both on the American and international opera scenes.

SAN FRANCISCO ó ìMy subject is war and the pity of war, and the poetry is in the pity.î

A remarkably quick turnaround from only last May when the first run of Handelís ìRadamistoî was blessed with a consistently high level of vocal performance may have been the reason for sparser houses this time round at the Hamburg Staatsoper (October 6th).

Of Donizettiís fifty or so ìseriousî operas, Lucia di Lammermoor was the only one to survive his heyday almost unscathed by change of fashion; today, when a dozen of his other worthy works have been restored to the repertory, Lucia easily hangs on.

There is a certain onerous responsibility in developing a new production of Carmen at a major house.