Category: Performances

The Grand Tour, whereby wealthy Britons travelled through Europe, in particular Italy, imbibing culture at its fountainhead, is the theme of this year’s Lufthansa Baroque Festival. The opening concert focused on Handel, whose reasons for going to Italy were professional, and whose route was unusual. German-born and trained, Handel spent four years in Italy in his early 20s, learning everything he needed to know about the Italian style, and particularly how to write Italian opera. Moving to London, he became its leading purveyor to English audiences for 30 years.

MANAUS, Brazil, May 8 – Richard Wagner set his fantastical world of Valkyries, gnomes and giants along the Rhine, not the Amazon. But this is a city with a long history of thinking large and even outlandishly, which is how the Amazonas Opera Festival here has ended up staging Wagner’s sprawling four-part “Ring of the Nibelungen” cycle in the heart of the world’s biggest rain forest.

DETROIT, May 8 – Grand opera is happiest when the issues are big and little neutral ground stands between good and evil. What better topic than American slavery and its aftermath? The Michigan Opera Theater’s premiere performance of “Margaret Garner” on Saturday night had heated the passions, stirred guilt and broken a lot of hearts before a word or a note was written.

Das Amt des Hausregisseurs gibt es an der Bayerischen Staatsoper offiziell nicht. Wenn aber einem diese Funktion gebührt, dann ist es David Alden. Über ein Dutzend Inszenierungen hat der New Yorker hier bereits herausgebracht. Seine aktuelle Regie: Francesco Cavallis Barock-Oper “La Calisto”, die am Montag im Nationaltheater ihre Münchner Erstaufführung erlebt. Ivor Bolton dirigiert. Das Stück erzählt von der Nymphe Calisto, in die sich Jupiter verliebt. In Gestalt der Göttin Diana bandelt er mit ihr an – was die Gattin natürlich übel nimmt.

‘The day on which a High Mass composed by me will be performed during the ceremonies solemnised for your imperial highness will be the most glorious day of my life,” wrote Beethoven in 1819 to Archduke Rudolph, the youngest brother of the Holy Roman Emperor Franz I and his composition student. Rudolph had just been elected archbishop of Olmütz in Moravia, and Beethoven was to write a setting of the mass for the installation the following year. In the event, however, the Missa Solemnis would take Beethoven five years to write and would be one of the grandest and most complex works of his later years. It is also one of the hardest of all musical works to perform. When Harmonia Mundi produced a live recording of the piece, conducted by Philippe Herreweghe, there were many who felt that this was the first time they had heard a performance that had the full measure of the work. This weekend he brings the same forces, the Collegium Vocale Gent and the Orchestre des Champs-Elysées to perform it in London.

Düsseldorf. Die “Geierwally” als Oper lässt ein Alpendrama mit deftigem Lokalkolorit vermuten. Die Düsseldorfer Erstinszenierung von Alfredo Catalanis “La Wally” bot stattdessen die Seelenstudie einer sexuell frustrierten Gesellschaftsdame, die mit ihrem Wohlstand nichts anzufangen weiß, weil sich ihr der Mann verweigert, den sie liebt. Das Premierenpublikum folgte dieser Umdeutung bereitwillig, jubelte ihr nicht ohne die Lust der Wiedererkennung begeistert zu.

Durant les riches années passées à la tête de la Monnaie de Bruxelles, Bernard Foccroulle aura élargi la palette de la mise en scène d’opéra, en faisant appel à des chorégraphes ou à des plasticiens. Ainsi, l’homme de théâtre et dessinateur, le Sud-Africain William Kentridge, grand inventeur d’images fixes et animées. Si l’alchimie se fait entre l’univers visuel du créateur et l’oeuvre qu’il met en scène, cela peut renouveler la question. Dans le cas contraire, on a l’impression de voir, pour paraphraser Godard, non pas «des images justes», mais «juste des images». C’est ce qui se passe avec La Flûte enchantée vue par Kentridge.

With a voice at once silvery and dark, compact yet ripe with overtones, soprano Soile Isokoski is in increasing demand as a Wagner and Strauss interpreter. New York so far has heard her primarily in Mozart and French opera, most recently as an achingly poignant Rachel in Halévy’s “La Juive” and as Marguerite in the Metropolitan Opera’s glitzy new staging of Gounod’s “Faust.”

Once upon a time, Masked Ball might have made sense. Back in the 1850s, when Giuseppe Verdi wrote it, he based his story on the assassination of Sweden’s King Gustavus III. A despot, cuckold, and philanderer, Gustavus further alienated himself from his subjects by claiming the exclusive right to produce aquavit, and was shot by one Jacob Johan Anckarström at a costume party in 1792.

Beinahe ist die Geschichte zu Ende. Einen Durchlauf wird die Adolf-Dresen-Inszenierung von Wagners “Ring”— Tetralogie in der kommenden Spielzeit noch erleben, dann ist — nach der 25. Aufführung der “Götterdämmerung” — Schluss. Am 2. Dezember 2007 beginnt mit der Premiere der “Walküre” ein neues “Ring”-Projekt, inszeniert von Sven-Eric Bechtolf, dirigiert von Franz Welser-Möst. Dieses wird im Mai 2009 abgeschlossen sein, ziemlich genau ein halbes Jahrhundert nach dem ersten Wiener Nachkriegs — “Ring” Herbert von Karajans.