Falstaff at the hands of old-guard avant-gardistes Christof Marthaler and Anna Viebrock. Set on a sound stage somewhere (certainly Hollywood) where Orson Wells is acting or directing his three Falstaff…
Parsifal at Bayreuth
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…
Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO introduce Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri to the Proms
“It’s the great masterpiece you’ve never heard.” So declared Sir Simon Rattle when he introduced Schumann’s Das Paradies und die Peri to the London Symphony Orchestra in 2015, in a…
VOCES8 and VOCES8 Scholars: The Milton Abbey Concert
The activities of the VOCES8 Foundation are as diverse as its values are singular: to promote music education for all. Alongside performances and recordings by VOCES8 and Apollo5, the Foundation’s…
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,…
Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald: a new recording on Resonus Classics
In March 1903, The Metropolitan Opera presented a double bill of Verdi’s II trovatore and Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald (The Forest). The latter was the first opera written by a…