The Bayreuth Festival has announced programming for the 2021 season. The season will open with “Die Fliegende Hollander” with Oksana Lyniv becoming the first woman conductor to lead an opera at the festival. Dmitri Tcherniakov directs the new production, which will star Eric Cutler, Georg Zeppenfeld, Asmik Grigorian, and Marina Prudenskaya. Performance Dates: July 25 – August 20, 2021 The festival {…}
(Credits: © Dario Acosta / Charles Castronovo official website / Deutsche Oper am Rhein official website / Kristian Schuller/Decca) The Salzburg Festival has announced its 2021 edition, featuring 8 operas and numerous concert performances. Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” will feature Mika Kares as Il Commendatore, Nadezhda Pavlova as Donna Anna, Michael Spyres in the role of Don Ottavio, Federica Lombardi as {…}
The Wiener Staatsoper is set to celebrate the New Year with a specially filmed performance of J.Strauss’ “Die Fledermaus.” The opera, which will be broadcast on ORF III on Dec. 31, 2020 will be conducted by Cornelius Meister in Otto Schenk’s classic production. The operetta will star Georg Nigl in his company role debut as Eisenstein, Camilla Nylund as Rosalinde, Jochen {…}
(Credit: Javier del Real) This review belongs to the third performance of cast A on the 16th of November 2020 After an absence of nearly a hundred years, “Rusalka” returned to the stage of Teatro Real, with a new production directed by Christof Loy in co-production with Säschsische Sttaatsoper Dresden, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, {…}
The Teatro Real de Madrid has announced that its current production of “Rusalka” will be streamed on Mezzo.tv. The company will stream the performance on Nov. 25 with Ivor Bolton conducting and Christof Loy directing the production. Asmik Grigorian sings the title role with a cast that includes Eric Cutler as the Prince, Karita Mattila as the Foreign Princess, Maxim Kuzmin-Karavaev as {…}
(Credits: Michael Cooper / ©Neda Navaee / Ray Burmiston/Decca Classics / Kristen Hoebermann / Clémentine Margaine official website / Algirdas Bakas) Deutsche Oper Berlin has announced its November and December 2020 schedule, which will spotlight a number of international opera stars. Here is the full slate. Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” will feature Philippe Talbot, Noel Bouley, Aigul Akhmetshina, Thomas {…}
(Credits: © Algirdas Bakas / Julian Baumann) The Wiener Staatsoper has confirmed that it will reopen on September 7, 2020. Vienna’s operatic behemoth will restart its performances after a six-month hiatus with the production “Madama Butterfly.” The strict COVID-19 rules for the audiences will include mandatory facemasks at all times, except when seated during the performance, and at least one {…}
(Credit: Salzburg Festival / Bernd Uhlig) Entering the dark Felsenreitschule hall of the Salzburg Festival, carved into the rock of a mountain, you feel uncomfortably crammed inside the mountain – in a terribly unfamiliar space that hides something in the distance of the stage. So far you can’t see or hear anything but in the air, you feel uncertainty, tension, {…}
We are deep into the summer, but opera has not stopped. We are getting live performances throughout Europe and still getting full slates of online opera offerings. So for this week’s recommendations, we are looking at a wide range of options, including a few classic works, a recital from two major opera stars, and a lot of new operas. As {…}
(Credit: Dario Acosta NY) German mezzo-soprano Tanja Ariane Baumgartner is one of the most sought-after opera singers of our time. Baumgartner has been a member of the ensemble at Oper Frankfurt since the 2009-10 season. During her time in Frankfurt, Tanja Baumgartner made appearances in numerous operas including “Carmen,” “Giulio Cesare in Egitto,” “Don Carlo,” “Medea,” “Die Frau ohne Schatten,” {…}
(Credit: Anne Zeuner / Salzburg Festival) Strauss’ opera “Elektra” will open this year’s Festival in Salzburg, in quite unique circumstances due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Conductor Franz Welser-Möst and stage director Krzysztof Warlikowski discussed their views of the production in a recent press release from the Salzburg Festival. “The danger of becoming inebriated with the opulence of sound and losing {…}
