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Reviews, Stage Reviews

Opera Forward Festival 2026 Review: The Knife Of Dawn

https://operawire.com/opera-forward-festival-2026-review-the-knife-at-dawn/

(Photo: Bart Grietens) Martin Carter was born in 1927 in the British South American colony of Guyana. As a young man, he became involved in left-wing political activism and in 1950 helped set up the People’s Progressive Party, which in 1953 was voted into government. It was not long, however, before it came into conflict with colonial interests, causing the British {…}
Reviews, Stage Reviews

Opera Forward Festival 2026 Review: Theory Of Flames

https://operawire.com/opera-forward-festival-2026-review-theory-of-flames/

(Photo: Marco Borggreve) The Dutch composer Michel van der Aa has carved out a successful niche for himself within the opera world with a series of pieces, which successfully marries accessible music with film and technological wizardry underpinned by a strong narrative. The world premiere of his new opera, “The Theory of Flames,” for Amsterdam’s Opera Forward Festival is his {…}
Reviews, Stage Reviews

Opera Forward Festival 2026 Review: Requiem For Mariza

https://operawire.com/opera-forward-festival-2026-review-requiem-for-mariza/

(Photo: Bart Grietens) Amsterdam’s Opera Forward Festival seeks to challenge our understanding of what constitutes an opera, to push at its accepted boundaries, and to discover new pathways in which the art form can develop, both in its form and its content as well as its mode of presentation. Over the past ten years, the festival has met with many {…}
News

Dutch National Opera Announces 2026 Opera Forward Festival

https://operawire.com/dutch-national-opera-announces-opera-forward-festival-2/

The Dutch National Opera has announced its Opera Forward Festival marking its tenth anniversary. The festival will take place between March 6 and 15, 2026. Productions The company will world premiere “Theory of Flames” by Michel van der Aa. The production will star sopranos Mary Bevan and Aphrodite Patoulidou alternating in the role of Neola, mezzo-soprano Helen Charlston as her {…}
Reviews, Stage Reviews

Opera Forward Festival 2024 Review: Oedipus Rex & Antigone

https://operawire.com/opera-forward-festival-2024-review-oedipus-rex-antigone/

One of the main events at this year’s Opera Forward Festival in Amsterdam was a Sophocles-inspired double bill featuring Stravinsky’s 1927 work “Oedipus Rex” and the world premiere of Samy Moussa’s new composition “Antigone.” Although neither piece is defined as an opera as such, both sit comfortably at home within the repertoire. “Oedipus Rex” is described as an opera-oratorio and {…}
Reviews, Stage Reviews

Opera Forward Festival 2024 Review: The Shell Trial

https://operawire.com/opera-forward-festival-2024-review-the-shell-trial/

(Photo: Marco Borggreve) In 2021, a court in The Hague ordered the giant oil company Shell to cut its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 relative to its 2019 levels. The case had been brought by Dutch environmental groups concerned by the company’s flagrant disregard for the damage their emissions were doing to the planet’s climate; recent research has shown {…}
News

Dutch National Opera Announces 2024 Opera Forward Festival

https://operawire.com/dutch-national-opera-announces-2024-opera-forward-festival/

The Dutch National Opera has announced its 2024 Opera Forward Festival which will take place between March 8 and 17, 2024 Among the works presented is Ellen Reid’s “The Shell Trial.” The contemporary opera delves into the context of a game-changing court case in which multinational oil giant, Shell, was confronted with its contribution to the climate crisis. The opera {…}
Reviews, Stage Reviews

Dutch National Opera Forward Festival 2023 Review: Perle Noire, Meditations For Joséphine

https://operawire.com/dutch-national-opera-forward-festival-2023-review-perle-noire-meditations-for-josephine/

Photo: Ruth Walz Josephine Baker was born into poverty in the early 1900s in St. Louis, Missouri, at a time when open discrimination against black people was enshrined in the Jim Crow laws. By the age of 12, she had dropped out of school and, within a year, was married. Fast forward to the mid-1920s, and she was the toast {…}

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