(Photo: Rolando Paolo Guerzoni) Composed by Gioachino Rossini in 1818, “Mosè in Egitto” is an opera that deserves close attention for its historical and musical significance. Created during a transitional phase in his career, Rossini crafted a masterpiece that merges sacred drama with opera seria. Based on the biblical tale of Exodus, Moses in Egypt marks a turning point in {…}
(Credit: Ken Howard / Met Opera) You’ve heard the cliché that Caruso famously said about doing a production of “Il Trovatore…” You know it. I won’t repeat it. The spirit of the idea stands, but the reality is that it takes far more than just sticking four superstars on stage and letting magic happen. It doesn’t always work that way. {…}
Puccini’s “Messa di Gloria” is not the unjustly belittled opera in disguise which musicologists, for decades, have made it to be. They objected to the unbefittingly ariose “Gratias agimus,” as well as the mass’ compilatory structure. For a “Mass of Glory,” strictly speaking, only contains the Kyrie and Gloria sections; Puccini, however, adopts all five movements of mass, and {…}
(Photo: Brescia e Amisano © Teatro all Scala) Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal confessed that he drew inspiration for “Der Rosenkavalier’s” libretto from Molière’s comedies, weaving them together with the roles of Italian commedia dell’arte. He wrote, “The characters were there, performing right in front of us: the Buffoon, the Old Man, the Young Man, the Lady, the Cherubino… Each {…}
(Photo: Agnese Zeltina Latvian National Opera) Latvian National Opera’s new production of Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann” was no simple reflection on the poet’s failed love affairs, in which the Muse/Nicklausse attempts to convince Hoffmann to forsake love’s attraction in favor of poetry. Rather, the director, Aik Karapetian, had an intriguing and very different reading in mind that turned it into {…}
(Credit: Cory Weaver) Whether you view Richard Wagner’s opera, “Tristan und Isolde,” as an expressive tale of universal human redemption or simply a unique take on the many medieval romances of love and death, there is no question it casts a spell. In the opening of San Francisco’s new production by Paul Curran, conducted by San Francisco’s own Eun Sun {…}
(Photo: ©2024 Marc Brenner) It is the first time The Royal Opera have staged Leonard Bernstein’s valedictory operatic double-bill of “Trouble in Tahiti” and “A Quiet Place,” presented in the Linbury Theatre. It is conducted by Nicholas Chalmers, who is also making his Covent Garden debut, and directed by Oliver Mears. “Trouble in Tahiti” is from 1954, and is separated {…}
(Photo: Íris Zanetti) At the start of October, the show “O Grão da Voz” (The Grain of the Voice) with the acclaimed Brazilian male soprano Bruno de Sá was presented at Theatro São Pedro, in São Paulo. Bruno and Ligiana Costa, the show’s stage director, gave an interview to João Marcos Copertino on OperaWire. The concert is available on YouTube. {…}
(Photo: Richard Hubert Smith) “’La traviata’ last night a failure. Was the fault mine or the singers? Time will tell.” So wrote Giuseppe Verdi in a letter the day after the premiere performance in Venice in 1853. Fast forward to 2024, in the week of his Birthday, to Glyndebourne’s Tom Cairns 2014 revival production; and Verdi would probably have written {…}