Category: Performances

It was, of course, coincidence. When the Chicago Lyric Opera scheduled George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess for the current season, not even the preludes to the 2008 presidential election had begun.

Not all of Munich’s holiday delights are to be found at the just-opened annual Christmas Market filling the Marienplatz and environs.

From the director’s point of view, there are two ways to approach staging an opera.

The opening performance of the ROH’s seventh revival of John Schlesinger’s 1980 production of The Tales of Hoffmann was
dedicated to the memory of Richard Hickox.

PellÈas et MÈlisande in a 200 seat theatre, with just 35 musicians and no pit?

There are two things which, in recent history, English National Opera has consistently done extremely well.

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.”