George Dyson began composing his nine-movement ‘cycle of poems’, Quo Vadis, in 1936 and completed it as the Second World War was ending, in 1945, but if it the grand…
Category: Performances
Beyond the Garden: a haunting one-act opera by Stephen McNeff
Theodor Adorno called her ‘the monster’; the wife of the writer Friedrich Torberg derided her as ‘a grande dame and at the same time a cesspool’. Yet, Alma Mahler was…
Acres of Consequence in Iowa
As a component of its Fiftieth Anniversary Season, Des Moines Metro Opera added to its already prestigious reputation with a compelling world premiere of Kristin Kuster and Mark Campbell’s A…
Post-Straussian sumptuousness at the Three Choirs Festival
For many, Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs (1948) represent the last great flowering of German Romanticism. 84 years of age, worn down by the tribulations and devastation of the Second…
Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
During its final week of the 2021-22 season the Chicago Symphony Orchestra featured several concert performances of Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera conducted by Riccardo Muti. The cast of…
Des Moines Teases American Apollo
In a notable departure from the complete works presented in past festivals, Des Moines Metro Opera adventurously programmed a mere fragment of an intriguing “work in progress,” American Apollo. To…
A rare double bill of Delius and Puccini: moving melodrama from Opera Holland Park
Opera Holland Park has a tradition of bringing little-known verismo operas into the light and making them shine. In recent years, the company has excelled with stagings of Mascagni’s Iris…
Prom 7: an ‘interventionist’ Dido and Aeneas from David Bates and La Nuova Musica
We have no idea what the first performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas sounded like, we’re not even sure when it took place. All we have are possibilities, probabilities, and a few…
l’incoronazione di Poppea in Aix
It is hard to say which was more impressive just now in Aix’s tiny Jeu de Paume theater — the musical edition of the Monteverdi masterpiece realized by conductor Leonardo…
Moïse et Pharaon in Aix
Rossini at the hand of a non-Rossinian, stage director Tobias Kratzer, to the baton of a real Rossinian, conductor Michele Mariotti. At the downbeat it was pure Rossini, Mo. Mariotti…