Category: Performances

We ought to consider – as opera’s current reigning soprano, Karita Mattila, has certainly considered, though I’m not so sure about director J¸rgen Flimm – who, what, and how old Salome is.

It probably wasn’t intended as a symbol of anything in particular, but at the end of Act II, midway through the October 6 performance of La Gioconda, Enzo’s ship failed to burst into flames, thereby letting the curtain down most unsatisfactorily on what is usually one of the liveliest act finales in grand opera.

By the time he completed Le Roi d’Ys, in 1888, Edouard Lalo was sixty-five, approaching the end of a successful career as a chamber violinist.

A funny thing happened on the way to the convent. Manon Lescaut, a pretty little girl with a taste for pretty things, became sidetracked by a pretty young man.

For the opening of the 2008/09 season at ENO, Richard Jones has teamed up with two separate theatrical writers, Sean O’Brien and Lee Hall, to create unique new versions of the repertoire’s most famous double bill.

It can be difficult to inject life into a production which has been a staple of a company’s repertoire for over twenty years.

If Munichís new Macbeth production does anything, it stirs emotions and draws heated response.

Decades ago a New Yorker cartoon showed a very little girl standing on tip-toe to return a book to a matronly librarian.

Korngold’s third opera Die tote Stadt premiered in 1920 in Cologne, the composer a mere 23 years old. Back then, opera remained a living art form, with the likes of Strauss and Puccini keeping the public excited about new works.

The second offering of the current WNO season is a San Diego Opera production of Georges Bizet’s Pearl Fishers (1863).