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Reviews, Stage Reviews

Royal Opera House 2024-25 Review: Turandot

https://operawire.com/royal-opera-house-2024-25-review-turandot/

At the risk of repeating myself, opera should be all about the music and the voice. If I’m ever asked to quantify that statement, I readily proffer “Turandot” in support of my assertions. For here is a ridiculous, cruel, convoluted tale that is impossible to like and grasp, perpetrated by a pair of unpleasant, thoroughly dislikeable characters with, were it {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Royal Opera House 2022-23 Review: Turandot

https://operawire.com/turandot-royal-opera-house-2022-23-review-2/

Photo: Marc Brenner Having an unequivocal passion for Puccini, this reviewer must confess to being somewhat conflicted over his final work. These concerns, though, have always been assuaged with the knowledge that many others have also been plagued with such uncertainty, not least with the original work itself, for, of course, the maestro died before the completion of “Turandot.” After {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Bregenz Festival 2021 Review: Rigoletto

https://operawire.com/bregenz-festival-2021-review-rigoletto/

The Bregenzer Festspiele, the annual open-air summer opera festival which takes place in Bregenz, Austria, revived its spectacular production of “Rigoletto” this July, a performance which originally premiered in the summer of 2019. After being closed for one season due to the pandemic, the festival has reopened, now requiring attendants to provide proof of negative COVID tests or vaccine certificates {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Metropolitan Opera 2019-20 Review: Agrippina

https://operawire.com/metropolitan-opera-2019-20-review-agrippina/

(Credit: Marty Sohl / Metropolitan Opera) The operas of Handel are not necessarily standards at the Metropolitan Opera. And to a certain extent, that is understandable. They are rather expansive in runtime with ample casts and a musical style that doesn’t always suit the cavernous hall. But the reality is that these operas, while dating to the 18th century, are {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Teatro Verdi Trieste 2018-19 Season Review: Madama Butterfly

https://operawire.com/teatro-verdi-trieste-2018-19-season-review-madama-butterfly/

In Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1881 operetta “Patience,” the Oscar Wilde parody character Reginald Bunthorne boasts “I do not care for all one sees – that’s Japanese.” At the end of the Victorian era, the Land of the Rising Sun was an object of immense curiosity all over Western Europe and it seemed no occidental nation was immune to the craze {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Deutsche Oper Berlin 2017-18 Review – Nabucco: Željko Lučić Stands Tall While Keith Warner’s Printing Press Production Needs Serious Editing

https://operawire.com/deutsche-oper-berlin-2017-18-review-nabucco-keith-warners-printing-press-production-needs-serious-editing/

With over 150 opera productions to his credit, British director Keith Warner is hardly a neophyte in the lyric theatre.  The mystery is how this respected regisseur could have made such a muddle out of “Nabucco” for the Deutsche Oper Berlin.  After all, it is not so difficult to stage Verdi’s first great operatic triumph. Jean-Paul Scarpitta managed to come {…}