Photo credit: SF/Marco Borell This was a fancy recital: Renée Fleming and Evgeny Kissin. The audience was also the “who’s who” of classical music. Just behind me, Cecilia Bartoli is seated with her mother, the emerita Silvana Bazzoni. Not far away, Jeanine De Bique and Sabine Devieilhe. Other non-operatic essential names pop all from the balconies. They all came to {…}
(Credit: Photo © SF/Bernd Uhlig) When Cecilia Bartoli enters the stage, all eyes are on her. The leading headliner in Salzburg has made herself a living legend. I know many music-lovers, of all ages, who have fallen in love with opera first and foremost because of Cecilia. Such talent has made legions of fans—myself included— to feel entitled to use {…}
(Photo Credit: SF/Matthias Horn) “Le Nozze di Figaro” in Salzburg is always a big challenge; it is Mozart’s city. The festival public is not conservative per se, but it does have high standards for Mozart, and will not willingly countenance simplistic approaches to the opera that would diminish Mozart and Da Ponte’s powerful message in name of some moralism. But {…}
(Photo: Sofia Opera & Ballet) Having successfully staged strong productions of “Das Rheingold” and “Die Walküre,” followed by a slightly less convincing presentation of “Siegfried,” Sofia Opera & Ballet concluded its new production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle with a splendid performance of “Götterdämmerung.” Not only was it musically, dramatically and visually gripping, but it also successfully brought together the threads {…}
(Photo: © SF/Marco Borrelli) If I had to define the Salzburg Festival in one word, it would be “tradition.” This has both good and bad implications. Revering tradition is an active attempt to make the past alive and present. The concertgoers sport their Dirndl and Lederhosen, traditional Tirol formal wear, with much pride, as they should. The claims of tradition, however, {…}
The music of Reiko Füting is far from being easily accessible. If anything, his self-declared aim to “explore the psychological nature of memory” makes the music seem more cryptic or, conversely, less ascribable to a given style or even school. There are in fact a lot of isms: punctualism, serialism, minimalism, etc. which fit under the postmodernist umbrella. Each describe {…}
Photo credit: Steve Pisano Teatro Nuovo is an opera company solely dedicated to the discovery and rediscovery of Italian music specifically from the Bel Canto period. In fact, they are the only opera company in the world dedicated to doing this right now. And, they are doing it exceedingly well. The Naples brothers Federico and Luigi Ricci’s “Crispino e la {…}
(Photo: Opera Holland Park 2023 © Craig Fuller) Part of “La bohème’s” appeal is surely in its cinematic quality. Puccini’s score does so much meticulous work that directors sometimes feel that they have little to do other than show the singers to the stage – and ensure they take the right cues from the orchestra. There are sudden close-ups and {…}
(Photo: Sofia Opera & Ballet) After a very successful performance of “Die Walküre,” expectations were running high for Sofia Opera & Ballet’s production of “Siegfried,” the third opera in the company’s latest Ring Cycle. Unfortunately, however, it fell short of the standards set by the two preceding operas, “Das Rheingold” and “Die Walküre,” and was dwarfed by the excellent presentation {…}