Category: Performances

Bellini’s Norma is the story of a love triangle involving Norma, the Druid high priestess, Pollione, the Roman proconsul and father of Norma’s two children, and Adalgisa, a Druid acolyte and Pollione’s new conquest whom he intends to take to Rome. The role of Norma is generally considered one of the most difficult in opera literature. Few have succeeded in mastering it. Now Edita Gruberova, has taken on the role at the Bayerische Staatsoper. Here are two reviews.

Earlier this week, Sir John Eliot Gardiner led the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique and the Monteverdi Choir in two immortal Mozart works: the C-minor Mass and the Requiem, followed by an evening of Mozart’s orchestral works. Here are three reviews.

This season the Royal Opera House has recreated “Richard Eyre’s popular production of Verdi’s La Traviata, which draws on striking period designs by Bob Crowley to amplify the tensions and confrontations that make Violetta’s predicament so tragic and her portrayal so real.” Here are three reviews:

The French city of Nice has this past week been enjoying some wonderful weather and the aptly-named Cote díAzur has truly lived up to its name.

On 8 January 2006, the Met Orchestra performed at Carnegie Hall with James Levine, RenÈe Fleming and Julien Robbins.

On 28 December 2005, soprano Alla Ablaberdyeva and pianist Andrei Korobeinikov presented a program of songs by Rachmaninov, Britten and Shostakovich. Here are four reviews.

The Metropolitan Opera presented Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore (The Elixir of Love), which “tells of the peasant Nemorino who decides to take some magic elixir sold to him by a quack doctor, so that he can win the heart of a wealthy land-owner, who (to spite Nemorino) has announced her marriage to a sergeant.” Here are three reviews:

The Metropolitan Opera presents Wozzeck, Alban Berg’s “operatic version of B¸chnerís play about a soldier who subjects himself to medical experiments to augment his pay.” Here are two reviews.

On 9 December 2005, Malena Ernman stepped in for an ailing Magdalena Koûen· at the Barbican in London. Here are three reviews.

THE METROPOLITAN OPERA: Verdi considered Victor Hugoís play Le Roi síamuse ìone of the greatest creations of the modern theatreî, and jumped at the opportunity to adapt it for Venice in 1851.