Although Lully’s operas are still not widely seen – certainly not outside of France, despite their fundamental part in the development of 17th century music drama – Atys (1676) fares…
Category: Staged Operas
The Banality of Evil Is Transcended by Silvery Glitz in Das Wunder Der Heliane for Strasbourg
From even the last phase of his life, on his return to Europe from the USA, Korngold has tended to be ignored as a not very serious composer, a late…
Henze’s The English Cat from Munich
For an opera derived from a French novel (Honoré de Balzac) by an English playwright (Edward Bond) and a German composer (Hans Werner Henze), The English Cat has had an…
Japonisme and Jollity: Heinz Zednik’s Die Fledermaus returns to the New National Theatre Tokyo
The New National Theatre Tokyo ushered in the year with the seventh revival of Heinz Zednik’s celebrated 2006 production of Die Fledermaus. At the 24 January matinée, the auditorium shimmered…
A Memory That Became A Story – Baruch’s Silence at Muffled Voices Festival
“Leave alone, just leave alone, child. He who cannot, cannot. Not every memory becomes a story, and not every story can be reduced to words.” It absolutely feels reductive to…
“A World Of Pleasure”: The Delta King’s Blues at INseries
Who knew that a Faustian story would work so well in an American setting? All I can say after seeing this version by Damien Geter and Jarrod Lee is: Eat…
The Triumph of Abstract Beauty: Saburo Teshigawara’s Orfeo ed Euridice returns to the New National Theatre Tokyo
The much-awaited revival of Saburo Teshigawara’s 2022 production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, seen on December 6, truly embodied the spirit of “less is sometimes more.” First presented in Vienna…
Strong Personalities Enliven ENO’s HMS Pinafore
Not so much a fearsome man-o’-war, this HMS Pinafore was more a tea clipper with a crew of jolly tars that could have come straight from the long-running radio series…
A Brilliant, Entertaining Merging of Two One-Act Comedies for the Donizetti Opera Festival
The two one act comic operas in this double bill were written as entirely separate works, in 1836 and 1841 respectively. But Stefania Bonfadelli pairs them brilliantly as two sides…
Agenda-Driven Les Noces de Figaro at the Palais Garnier Undermines any Humour
I sometimes wonder if directors actually like music or even the operas they agree to stage. This reboot of Netia Jones’s 2022 Les Noces de Figaro is a reminder of…