A winged angel, multiple birdcages and confining walls of brilliant white dominate this symbol-heavy staging of Kátya Kabanová, a production first unveiled by Damiano Michieletto at Glyndebourne in 2021. A few…
Category: Staged Operas
Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in Bayreuth
The first two of this fourth edition of the 2022 Bayreuth Ring des Nibelungen, staged by Valentin Schwarz, with the understanding that the Bayreuth Festival mounts a new Ring every…
Back to the Future: Verdi’s Macbeth at Teatro Nuovo
Big American opera companies in America today resemble Broadway companies. They strive to fill gargantuan theaters by serving up a mix of warhorses and crossover repertoire, staged by celebrity directors,…
Berlin Staatsoper’s poignant re-interpretation of Strauss’s comedy Die schweigsame Frau
Die schweigsame Frau (1935) was Strauss’s only collaboration with Stefan Zweig – a writer as prominent and satisfactory for the composer to work with as Hugo von Hofmannsthal had been…
Glyndebourne brings Falstaff to Metroland
In Richard Jones’s production of Verdi’s last opera, first seen in 2009, big, bold sets evoke mid-1940s Windsor, just after the end of the War. The mock Tudor facades of…
A new Meistersinger in Bayreuth
Following the one with the gigantic blow-up of Beckmesser as a caricatured evil Jew. Zeitgeist has now made Beckmesser a populist rockstar, (lead photo, Michael Nagy as Beckmesser). The problem…
West Green Opera’s Macbeth Proves that Less is More
In the capable hands of director and designer Richard Studer and conductor Jonathan Lyness, this production more than suggests that Verdi’s Macbeth can be performed with a reduced orchestra and…
Something A Little Different Indeed: Yeomen of the Guard at Young Victorian Theatre Company
When one thinks of Gilbert and Sullivan, one thinks: Comedy. Wordplay. Happy ending. Although there is plenty of the first two in Yeomen of the Guard, alas, as the only…
Pénélope at Bavarian State Opera
Fauré’s only opera Pénélope was premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in March 1913, moving to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées only two months later. It has fared incommensurably less well…
Face-Melting Dialogues of the Carmelites at Wolf Trap Opera
What a delight to see the stage at The Barns so completely transformed from the set of Marriage of Figaro! It’s the first thing I noticed upon entering the venue.…