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Metropolitan Opera Preview 2016-17: Kristine Opolais Set to Enrapture Audiences in ‘Rusalka’

https://operawire.com/metropolitan-opera-preview-2016-17-kristine-opolais-set-to-enrapture-audiences-in-rusalka/

Dvorak’s “Rusalka” makes a much-anticipated return to the Metropolitan Opera this Thursday, Feb. 2 in a brand-new production by noted director Mary Zimmerman. The Director Zimmerman made a splash at the Met with her work on three operas from the Bel Canto three – Donizetti, Rossini and Bellini. Her work in “Lucia di Lammermoor” was universally hailed for gothic style. Her {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Royal Ballet & Opera 2026-27 Review: Parsifal

https://operawire.com/royal-ballet-opera-2026-27-review-parsifal/

(Photo: The Royal Opera ©2026 Marc Brenner) The titular character arrives on stage chased by an unruly mob, carrying a convincingly designed and crafted dying swan—the spoils of his hunt. His pursuers are clearly bent on seeking retribution, yet under questioning, he appears to know very little of anything: neither his origins, the world around him, his past, nor even {…}

DVD and CD Reviews

CD Review: György Kurtág’s ‘Fin de partie’

https://operawire.com/cd-review-gyorgy-kurtags-fin-de-partie/

Hungarian composer György Kurtág turned 100 years old this February. He spent his late eighties and early nineties working on his first opera, “Fin de partie” (“Endgame”), based on Samuel Beckett’s play, opened at La Scala in 2018. This was a century and quarter after Verdi’s geriatric masterpiece “Falstaff” premiered at the same fabled theater — an opera he wrote {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Royal Ballet & Opera 2026-27 Review: Don Giovanni

https://operawire.com/royal-ballet-opera-2026-27-review-don-giovanni/

(Photo: Mihaela Bodlovic) Technically classified as an opera buffo, or a comic opera, both Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte formally assigned it on the printed score as a dramma giocoso, which translates literally to “drama with jokes” or “joking drama.” Without giving away the entire plot, “Don Giovanni” tells the dramatic tale of an unrepentant, narcissistic nobleman whose {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Styriarte Festival 2026 Review: Die Schöpfung

https://operawire.com/styriarte-festival-2026-review-die-schopfung/

(Photo: Nikola Milatovic) When traveling to Graz for the summer Styriarte festival, one might expect the grand choral architecture of Joseph Haydn to echo through a stunning cathedral in the old town center. The reality, however, arrived as a complete surprise. The festival’s flagship production unfolded beneath an imposing double-facade Science Tower, surrounded by trendy contemporary apartments boasting container-style structures. {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Staatsoper Berlin 2025-26 Review: Samson et Dalila

https://operawire.com/staatsoper-berlin-2025-26-review-samson-et-dalila/

(Photo: Matthias Baus) There are operas that survive on the strength of their plot, and then there are those that survive because the music transforms the improbable into the inevitable. “Samson et Dalila” belongs decidedly to the latter camp. Saint-Saëns fashioned a score of extraordinary sensuality around a drama whose biblical certainties had long ceased to compel. Production Details Argentine {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Baltic Opera Festival 2026 Review: Polish Wedding

https://operawire.com/baltic-opera-festival-2026-review-polish-wedding/

(Photo: Krzysztof Mystkowski/ Baltic Opera Festival) Józef Beer’s “Polish Wedding” is one of those works in which history seems almost as dramatic as its plot. Premiered in Zurich in 1937 under the title “Polnische Hochzeit,” the operetta became an immediate international success, was translated into eight languages (but not Polish), and quickly established itself across Europe. Then history intervened. As {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Opéra de Paris 2025-26 Review: ‘La Cenerentola’

https://operawire.com/opera-de-paris-2025-26-review-la-cenerentola/

(Photo Credit: Julien Benhamou) “La Cenerentola,” which premiered in Rome in 1817, was famously composed by Gioachino Rossini in record time — legend has it in just three weeks — and remains one of the finest examples of opera buffa in his oeuvre. Alongside its comic situations and eccentric characters, the score contains an undercurrent of melancholy and pathos that {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

National Theatre in Prague 2025-26 Review: Parsifal

https://operawire.com/national-theatre-in-prague-2026-review-parsifal/

(Photo: Serghei Gherciu) A week before Good Friday, the National Theatre in Prague premiered a “Parsifal” that seemed less a ritual of inherited faith than an inquiry into the architecture of knowledge itself. Richard Wagner’s final work–his self-styled Bühnenweihfestspiel of 1882–has always invited metaphysical inflection. In “Parsifal,” Richard Wagner distills a vast philosophical meditation into a deceptively simple narrative: A {…}