It was emeritus night at the Salzburg Festival with 75 year old maestro Mariss Jansons conducting 77 year old stage director Hans Neuenfels production about Pushkin’s 87 year old countess known as the Pique Dame.
Tag: Milenski
Salome in Salzburg
A Romeo Castellucci production is always news, it is even bigger news just now in Salzburg where Lithuanian soprano Asmik Grigorian has made her debut as the fifteen year-old Salome.
Gianni Schicchi by Oberlin in Italy
It’s an all too rare pleasure to see Puccini’s only comedy as a stand alone opera. And more so when it is a careful production that uncovers the all too often overlooked musical and dramatic subtleties that abound in Puccini’s last opera.
Mefistofele at Orange’s ChorÈgies
This is the one where a very personable devil tells God that mankind is so far gone it isn’t worth his time to bother corrupting it further.
A Choral Trilogy at the Aix Festival
What Seven Stones (the amazing accentus / axe 21), and Dido and Aeneas (the splendid Ensemble Pygmalion) and Orfeo & Majnun (the ensemble [too many to count] of eleven local amateur choruses) share, and virtually nothing else, is spectacular use of chorus.
L’Ange de feu (The Fiery Angel)
in Aix
Prokofiev’s Fiery Angel is rarely performed. This new Aix Festival production to be shared with Warsaw’s Teatr Wielki exemplifies why.
Ariane ‡ Naxos (Ariadne auf Naxos) in Aix
Yes, of course British stage director Katie Mitchell served up Richard Strauss’ uber tragic Ariadne on Naxos at a dinner table. Over the past few years Mme. Mitchell has staged quite a few household tragedies at the Aix Festival, mostly at dinner tables, though some on doorsteps.
Gˆtterd‰mmerung in San Francisco
The truly tragic moments of this long history rich in humanity behind us we embark on the sordid tale of the Lord of the Gibichungs’s marriage to Br¸nnhilde and the cowardly murder of Siegfried, to arrive at some sort of conclusion where Br¸nnhilde sacrifices herself to somehow empower women. Or something.
Siegfried in San Francisco
We discover the child of incestuous love, we ponder a god’s confusion, we anticipate an awakening. Most of all we marvel at genius of the composer and admire the canny story telling of the Zambello production.