La bohème has played in forty-eight of San Francisco Opera’s 102 seasons. In fact, back in 1923 it was the inaugural piece of this grand old American opera company. Here’s…
Category: Staged Operas
Gothic horror meets Siegmund Freud in Saint-Saëns’s The Silver Bell at Winchester’s Theatre Royal
Of Camille Saint-Saëns’s thirteen operas, only Samson and Dalila remains a regular part of the repertory. So, the enterprising New Sussex Opera must be congratulated on presenting the UK premiere…
Der Ring des Nibelungen at Theater Basel
Richard Wagner’s epic artistic extravaganza, Der Ring des Nibelungen, is a bucket list item for some and an obsession for others aching for immersion into its mix of myth and reality, while…
Handel’s Saul at Glyndebourne
I found myself listening at home to Saul a few months ago (Charles Mackerras’s outstanding Leeds Festival recording with Donald McIntyre, James Bowman, Margaret Price, et al.). It made for…
A richly imagined and musically compelling Simon Boccanegra from Grange Park Opera
The Viennese critic Edward Hanslick once compared Brahms’ Fourth Symphony to “a dark well”, and declared “the longer we look into it, the more brightly the stars shine back”. Such…
Memorable singing and vivid orchestral playing enliven Grange Festival’s Traviata
Grange Festival’s new production of Verdi’s tragedy brings magnificent singing and much superb playing from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Richard Farnes who makes his house debut. Director Maxine Braham,…
A Captivating Il barbiere di Siviglia at the New National Theatre Tokyo
Josef E. Köpplinger’s 2005 production of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia celebrated its fifth revival in Tokyo this year. At the matinee on June 1st, the NNTT was filled with…
InSeries’ Ethiopia: A Premiere Worth The 90-Year Wait
In 1937, while aggression from Mussolini’s Italy threatened to destroy the empire of Ethiopia, and Emperor Haile Selassie pleaded his country’s case with the League of Nations, Arthur Arent saw…
Emphatic singing characterises much of Garsington’s darkly imagined Queen of Spades
When Tchaikovsky’s card-game opera first appeared at London’s Drury Lane Theatre in 1915, it was announced by The Times as ‘a romance’. That’s marketing for you and pushing things a…
Harvey Milk Reimagined at San Francisco’s Opera Parallèle
Recalling a very dark moment in San Francisco’s history, Michael Korie and Stewart Wallace’s Harvey Milk Reimagined [for small operatic forces], arrived, via St. Louis, finally in San Francisco. This…