The Tender Land in Lyon

It is not often that a Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land comes along with resources like those of the OpÈra de Lyon, one of Europe’s finest. So carpe diem!

Coeur de Chien aka A Dog’s Life in Lyon

If satire is your thing you will not want to miss this opera about human testicles grafted onto a dog.

Rusalka in Monaco

Every-once-in-a-while a Rusalka comes along, and this week there are even two here on the French Riviera — just now in Monaco and upcoming Saturday on movie screens all along the coast.

Eugene Onegin in Montpellier

Entering the hall there arose the Dantesque “abandon all hope ye who enter” feeling — a cluttered a vista socialist setting, a poster of Lenin and large letters proclaiming Moscow, December 1999.

Cosi fan tutte in Montpellier

This Cosi fan tutte completes the Montpellier Mozart/da Ponte trilogy staged by French metteur en scËne and esthËte Jean-Paul Scarpitta. Primarily studies in elegance and refinement these mises en scËnes have provoked all that that is most precious and perfect in Mozart’s scores.

Otello in Genoa

Forget Shakespeare, this was distinctly an Otello without the ‘h’. It was Italian melodramma to its core, the collaboration of its metteur en scËne Davide Livermore, wunderkind conductor Andrea Battistoni and its Desdemona, Maria Agresto.

Les Contes d’Hoffmann in Lyon

Maybe there can be no bigger feat than making it through Les Contes d’Hoffmann in the Laurent Pelly version without a hitch or two.

Porgy and Bess in San Francisco

It’s been renamed “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” it hails itself as “The American Musical” and further qualifies itself as “The Porgy and Bess for the Twenty-First Century.”

The Barber of Seville in San Francisco

San Francisco Opera wraps up its fall season of five operas with what it insists is a new production of Rossini’s comic masterpiece.

Der Fliegende Holl‰nder in San Francisco

Train wrecks are fascinating events, huge forces collide, brutal destruction results. Investigators rush to the scene to explain how and why it happened.