What a difference a conductor makes: Puccini’s less-wounded Butterfly

Two years ago, on this very site, I reviewed a matinée performance of Madama Butterfly at Covent Garden; the review was titled A Wounded Butterfly.  The beautiful production by Moshe…

La fanciulla del West in Lyon

Forget the West of San Francisco born David Belasco’s The Girl of the Golden West (the source of Puccini’s opera), not to be confused with Peter Sellers’ The Girls of…

Pique Dame in Lyon

The Russian Avant-garde has attacked Lyon, Pique Dame is left in ruin! Enfant terrible (now forty years old) Russian avant-gardiste stage director Timofeï Kouliabine fled Russia in protest of its…

Staatsoper Hamburg’s new production of Il Trovatore is a hit-and-miss affair.

Modern stage directors famously like to shake things up. Immo Karaman, directing Hamburg’s new production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, has two guiding principles in the frame: this is an opera…

Janáček’s Jenůfa burns intensely at ENO

One of Janáček’s most famous operas, Jenůfa is a clear masterpiece. Janáček, in his remarkable adaptation of Gabriela Preissová’s play Její pastorkyña (Her Stepdaughter), offers a searing tale of infanticide…

An Enchanting, Must-See Magic Flute from ENO

Entertainment does not come much more laugh-out-loud than English National Opera’s current run of The Magic Flute, now in its third revival, and notwithstanding recent machinations over the company’s future.…

The Dutchman returns to Covent Garden

Tim Albery’s production of Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer – which presents, as the composer intended, the opera in one unbroken, 140-minute span and concludes with the ‘Dresden’ ending of emphatic…

Musically Ravishing Roméo et Juliette in Idaho

Opera Idaho has gifted their public with a thrillingly sung and played performance of Charles Gounod’s tuneful and compelling take on Shakespeare’s evergreen classic tale of star-crossed love: Romeo and…

La traviata in Marseille

Three fine singers saved Marseille Opéra’s recent 5 performance run of La traviata. Marred by a bizarre pit and weird staging conceits, Verdi’s middle period masterwork emerged, in spite of…

Adriana Lecouvreur in Paris

The one by Francesco Cilea. There are several others by forgotten composers. This one sits uneasily in the verismo category given its hyper contrived plot and its historical setting. Leading…