Category: Performances

The Bayerische Staatsoper, based in three spectacular houses where Mozart, Wagner and many other composers premiered their works, presents over 300 annual performances to a discerning public.

Bernd Alois Zimmermann was a sensitive, none too healthy 21-year-old music prodigy in 1939, when he was drafted into the German army.

For Sir William Walton, the protracted genesis of Troilus and Cressida must have seemed more akin to the agonies of Sisyphus than to the composition of an opera.

Originating at the Ch‚telet, where the narration was given in French, Robert Carsen’s staging of Bernstein’s unique satire worked rather well in its television broadcast from the Parisian house late in 2006.

The disastrous 1904 La Scala premiere of Giacomo Pucciniís Madame Butterfly is one of those famous annals of opera which tend to leave todayís audiences perplexed about all the uproar.

The concert ì20th-Century Masters,î presented by the Grant Park Music Festival, Chicago on 27 and 28 June 2008 featured several pieces performed for the first time under the auspices of the Festival.

David Gockley heard the cries of many an opera fan that Pamela Rosenberg had denied them their ‘stars,’ so for his summer season, 2008, he brought them Natalie Dessay, Susan Graham, Ruth Ann Swenson, and Stefan Margita.

My visit to two rarely mounted pieces at the Opera Festival of St. Louis brought to mind the little girl with the curl, for when it was good, it was very very good and when it was bad, it was, um. . .er. . .

In the latter part of last year, the casting for Nicholas Hytnerís new production of Don Carlo ó in the five-act Italian version ó looked to be on shaky ground.

No one has ever called Gazzanigaís Don Giovanni an overlooked masterpiece.