(Photo credit: Keith Saunders) The Opera Australia production of Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” that opened at the Sydney Opera House on March 13 was the second time in a year that Erin Helyard conducted the work. Previously, Helyard’s own company Pinchgut Opera had presented the work at Angel Place Recital Hall. This time Helyard conducted a co-production between Opera Australia {…}
(Photo: Michele Crosera) Although the Sicilian composer Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725) is famed for his prolific output of operas–he claimed to have written well over 100–which were significant in laying the foundations for the development of 18th century opera seria, he rarely strayed into the field of comic opera. The single major exception was his 1718 work, “Il trionfo dell’onore,” written {…}
The Metropolitan Opera revived “Le Nozze di Figaro” for the 2024-25 season. I’ve seen this Richard Eyre production countless times and it’s always a breath of air to see how different casts can take the same directions, but breathe new life into them. And this cast was no different. When I reviewed the opera in 2021-22, I remarked how different {…}
(Photo: Brescia e Amisano) It was December 7, 2019, when the curtain of Teatro alla Scala rose before the select audience that annually attends the Sant’Ambroeus performance, better known among opera lovers as “La prima della Scala,” the event that inaugurates the new season of the prestigious Italian theater. To open the 2019-20 season—unaware that it would soon be brutally {…}
(Credit: Monika Rittershaus) Barrie Kosky’s new production of Philip Glass’s 1983 opera “Akhnaten,” running through April 20 at the Komische Oper Berlin, represents a long-overdue homecoming. This is the city most intimately connected with “Akhnaten’s” historical legacy; the archaeological treasures of the enigmatic Pharoah’s destroyed city, Tel-El-Amarna, excavated by Ludwig Borchardt with funding from the philanthropist James Simon in 1912 {…}
(Photo: ©OMC Marco Borrelli) A Parisian critic during the belle époque once wrote about the Opéra de Monte-Carlo: “If only the Paris Opera could assemble for one special performance a cast equivalent to the one that the inhabitants of the little earthly paradise on the Mediterranean will be able to applaud all winter long!” (La Renaissance musicale, October 8, 1881) {…}
On March 24, “Le Nozze di Figaro” was offered at the Philharmonie Luxembourg in a concert version with the Basel Chamber Orchestra conducted by Giovanni Antonini. A chamber orchestra is not only well-suited to the Grand Auditorium of the Philharmonie Luxembourg, but also allows us to better appreciate Mozart’s orchestral structure than with a symphony orchestra, thanks to a {…}
(Photo : Vincent PONTET) From March 21 to April 6, the Théâtre des Champs Elysées presents a new production of Jules Massenet’s “Werther,” staged by Christof Loy and directed by Silvia Aurea De Stefano. It’s probably no exaggeration to consider it one of the best of the first quarter of 2025, at least. In fact, it’s been a long time {…}
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 {…}