Whether or not J.S. Bach’s seasonal work is an oratorio in the strict sense of the word is questionable, and for the purposes of a review, it is perhaps immaterial.…
Category: Performances
Die Walküre at Opera Australia
For all Chinese-born, New York-based director Chen Shi-Zheng’s attempts to posit Wagner’s 4-part Der Ring des Nibelungen as “modern science fiction” in a multiverse setting, all the archetypal elements Wagner wrote into…
Das Rheingold at Opera Australia
Having been postponed in both 2020 and 2021 due to the global pandemic, Opera Australia’s much-publicized new “digital” Ring Cycle finally opened Friday evening. And it couldn’t have been more…
The English Concert celebrate Saffron Hall’s 10th anniversary with a superb Rodelinda
Not many concert venues double up as school assembly halls. Actually, that statement does a double disservice: first, to Saffron Hall, which opened on the site of Saffron Walden County…
Simon Boccanegra at the New National Theatre Tokyo
To some people, Simon Boccanegra (1857, rev. 1881) is one of Verdi’s finest musical masterpieces, yet both admirers and detractors regard it as based on one of his most problematic…
A dystopian Ariodante at the Royal Academy of Music
‘The Rules’ define a male-centric world as oppressive and restrictive as Margaret Atwood’s Gilead. Kings rule by divine right. Gender is binary. The value of a woman is her purity.…
Welsh National Opera: Ainadamar at the Mayflower, Southampton
Spain is ‘a country of death, a country open to death’ once declared the poet and playwright Federico García Lorca. It’s an assertion that provides a foretaste of Ainadamar, Osvaldo…
Médée at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s lyric tragedy Médée premiered in 1694 with its dedicatee, Louis XIV, in attendance. The five-act libretto adapted by Thomas Corneille from Euripides’ play retells one of the most…
L’amore dei tre re at La Scala, Milan
Following its 1913 world premiere at the Teatro alla Scala, Italo Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre re (The Love of Three Kings) immediately entered the standard repertory both in Italy and…
Salome at the Staatsoper Hamburg
The recent production of Richard Strauss’s Salome at the Staatsoper Hamburg, one of Germany’s major companies, has received rapturous reviews. Its main virtue is the assumption of the title role…