There are intractable conventions at Bayreuth. There are no supertitles. Parsifal is done every year (though it was not during WWII due to ideological incompatibility). There is no applause after…
Category: Staged Operas
Adelaide di Borgogna in Pesaro
Adelaide di Borgogna was the wife of Lothario, king of Italy, who was assassinated in the year 950 A.D. Rossini set the eponymous dramma per musica by one Giovanni Schmidt…
Aureliano in Palmira in Pesaro
The year is 1813, Rossini is 22 years old. He has had two huge successes in Venice — L’italiana in Algeri, his first big comedy (there were seven smaller ones…
Eduardo e Cristina in Pesaro
Rossini’s twenty-eighth opera in a new critical edition by the Fondazione Rossini — no actual Rossini autograph exists — in a new production by Italian stage director Stefano Poda. A…
A Tale of Two Lucias
Most European summer opera attendees head either to a mass outdoor event such as Verona, Orange and Bregenz, or to an exclusive spot such as Salzburg, Bayreuth, Glyndebourne, or Aix-en-Provence.…
György Kurtág’s Endgame receives its UK premiere at the Proms
What sort of music might capture the enigmatic nihilism of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame? The play’s fragmentation and dislocation? Its seemingly pointless patterns of repetition and variation? György Kurtág’s aphoristic stutters,…
Trouble in Tahiti at the Arcola Theatre
Ned Rorem described works such as Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti (1952) as ‘Broadway operas’: a fusion of opera, music theatre and tv sitcom. There’s obviously a lot of edgy…
Ruddigore at Opera Holland Park
Ruddigore has always had a problematic status in the G&S canon. Following hot on the heels of The Mikado, its premiere in 1887 was met with catcalls and jeers. Some…
Santa Fe Rusalka: Freudian Slip-up
Santa Fe Opera staged another local premiere this summer with the welcome company addition of Antonín Dvořák and Jaroslav Kvapil’s splendid opera, Rusalka, directed by the acclaimed Sir David Pountney.…
Enigmatic Debussy Riches in New Mexico
Santa Fe Opera is to be applauded for including Debussy’s inscrutable masterpiece, Pelléas and Mélisande in this summer’s festival season. This important work is more admired than loved, and a…