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News

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

Irish National Opera 2026-27 Review: Testament

https://operawire.com/irish-national-opera-2026-27-review-testament/

(Photo: Patrick Redmond) In 2011, Colm Tóibín’s play, “Testament,” premiered at the Dublin Theatre Festival. The piece required only a single actress, who, cast as Mary, recalls the life of her son, Jesus, as she remembers it. It is a very personal recollection, one that does not always correspond to his life as presented in the gospels. Fast forward to {…}

Reviews, Stage Reviews

Festival Verdi 2026 Review: Alzira

https://operawire.com/festival-verdi-2026-review-alzira/

(Photo: Roberto Ricci – Festival Verdi) A Colonial Tragedy Diminished by Melodrama Giuseppe Verdi’s “Alzira,” premiered in Naples in 1845, has enjoyed a curious afterlife. The composer’s own alleged verdict, “questa è proprio brutta” (“this is really ugly”), has become almost more famous than the opera itself. His eighth stage work, and one of the least performed in his catalogue, {…}

Behind the Scenes, Interviews

Q & A: Florian Amort on Contemporary Händel-Festspiele Halle Curation

https://operawire.com/q-a-florian-amort-on-contemporary-handel-festspiele-halle-curation/

(Photo: Anna Kolata) Florian Amort, born in Berchtesgaden in 1992, serves as the Director of the Stiftung Händel-Haus and the Artistic Director of the Händel-Festspiele Halle. He succeeds Dr. Bernd Feuchtner, who passed away in February 2025, shortly before his planned retirement. A former scholar of the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Amort studied musicology, art history, history, and Catholic theology {…}

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 {…}