Category: Performances

Marlis Petersen, the much lauded “Lulu-du-jour,” brought her well-traveled portrayal of Berg’s complex heroine to Chicago Lyric Opera and she alone was almost worth the price of admission.

The rare Rossini opera which brought Juan Diego FlÛrez to international attention in Pesaro in 1996 was thrown together by the composer at the last minute to meet a deadline in February 1821, with a plot from one source and characters from another, and bits of the score filled in by Pacini.

As Tom Stoppard put it, “There is an art to the building up of suspense.”

The Met has not staged La Damnation de Faust in a hundred years, since 1906, when it clocked a mere five performances.

When La Traviata had its first performance, in Venice in 1853, it was a scandal.

After a somewhat shaky start to the season, as my recently posted review of La traviata attests, Washington National Opera has added considerable luster to its roster this November with the infusion of spectacle and star power in two new productions.

Wozzeck stands ankle deep in water on the flooded stage of the Bavarian State Opera, above him hovers a huge, movable box – the dingy apartment he shares with Marie and their adolescent bastard – and he is surrounded by a freak-show worthy of a George Groszian nightmare and worse.

“This won’t be a total Schlacht of sound” said the director, Charles Edwards, of this production. Instead, it’s a strikingly intelligent interpretation, focusing on the deeper aspects of the drama.

It is incredibly unfashionable nowadays to stage opera straightforwardly. Welsh National Opera’s recent lavish staging of Otello prompted a dismissive reception from the critics.