Des Moines Metro Opera’s World Premiere of Damien Geter and Lila Palmer’s American Apollo could hardly have been more of an “occasion.” This intriguing musical exploration of the artistic and…
Iowa’s Star-Powered Strauss
Salome is a big, big sing and happily, Des Moines Metro Opera has engaged a big, big star. “Dazzling” is too puny an adjective to describe Sara Gartland for her…
Samson at the Aix Festival
Rameau’s Samson, with the libretto by François-Marie Arouet aka Voltaire, or rather a sort of Rameau/Voltaire Samson imagined by French early music conductor Raphaél Pichon and German stage director Otto Guth,…
Des Moines’ Pelléas à la perfection
Well, well, well, Des Moines Metro Opera has done it again. With their unerringly imaginative and evocative staging of Claude Debussy’s hauntingly lovely masterpiece Pelléas et Mélisande, they have made…
Songs and Fragments at the Aix Festival
That’s Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969) by Peter Maxwell Davies and Kafka-Fragmente (1987) by György Kurtág, an inspired pairing by Pierre Audi, the artistic director of the Aix…
Idomeneo, rè di Creta in Munich
Take a stroll around central Munich and you may come upon a plaque on Altenhofstrasse indicating the spot where Mozart lived in the winter of 1780-81 whilst at work on…
Le grand macabre in Munich
The Fourth of July has obvious political meaning in the United States. This year, it also offered the date of the long-awaited British General Election: a curious event, strangely without…
Madama Butterfly at the Aix Festival
Well, why not? Why not place this iconic statement of Italian verismo in the hands of a hyper-teutonic, avant-garde (ish) stage director, adding in a new-age Italian conductor for good…
A Colourful and Properly Immersive Take on Tippett’s Wacky Last Opera
Tippett’s last opera New Year (premiered at Houston in 1989, given at Glyndebourne the following year and apparently not staged in this country since) looks forwards and backwards as its…
Madau-Diaz’s Tosca returns to the New National Theatre Tokyo
The NNTT commemorated the centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s death with Antonello Madau-Diaz’s very popular production of Tosca under the baton of the renowned Maurizio Benini. Now enjoying its eighth revival,…