Category: Performances

If you are in need of a Romantic, Alt-Nuernberg, Beloved-Old-Vaterland-As-It-(Never)-Was sort of production of “Die Meistersinger,” you would probably do well to wait for the Met revival, and stay far far away (actually, add another “far” to that) from the Bayreuth Festpiel’s latest “Skandal”-ripe interpretation.

For twenty-eight years now the Ohio Light Opera Festival (OLO) has held forth in Wooster in the summertime, presenting no less than 99 different works (their big 100th comes next year), familiar and forgotten, by the likes of Gilbert and Sullivan, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Offenbach, Sigmund Romberg, Carl Zeller and Emmerich K·lm·n — to refer only to the authors of the seven undertaken this year.

ìTea: Mirror of the Soulî with book by Xu Ying and music by Tan Dun, revised from an earlier version first produced in Japan in 2002, was to have been the novelty of the present Santa Fe Opera season. Instead, it was dead on arrival.

On a cold winterís day in Vienna, just before Christmas 1790, Mr. Haydn dined with Mr. Mozart for the last time.

The legend of Orpheus and Eurydice has come down through the centuries to us, on the way inspiring some sixty-four other known operas.

The first masterpiece in the history of opera. Thatís a tall order to live up to for any company and for any band of singers, especially those at the beginning of their careers.

W. A. Mozartís CosÏ fan tutte, heard on a stormy night July 11, proved a sorry exercise in deconstruction, something I never expected to endure at Santa Fe Opera.

Staatsoper Stuttgart presented its new production of The Girl of the Golden West, directed by Calixto Bieito. And, well, it began with an added dialogue scene to establish the “concept.”

In 2003, at Cagliís Accademia del Teatro, Elisabetta Courir directed a compelling CosÏ fan tutte, minimalist, sophisticated and low-budget; quite unlike Daniele Abbado, whose Lohengrin for Bolognaís Teatro Comunale integrated ìhardî scenery, video projections and historically informed costumes into a dream-like pageant.

Just whose opera is “Der Rosenkavalier” anyway? The title — to begin with the obvious — says it’s youthful Octavian, pinpointing his role as the bearer of the rose that is to seal the marriage contract of Ochs and child-like Sophie.