(Photo: Bregenz Festival / Daniel Ammann) Few festivals possess an identity as distinctive as the Bregenz Festival. Founded in 1946 on the shores of Lake Constance, it rapidly became one of Europe’s most recognizable summer events through its spectacular Seebühne (Lake Stage), an immense floating stage whose colossal engineering feats and monumental scenery have become as celebrated as the performances {…}
(Photo: Brescia e Amisano © Teatro alla Scala) There are works that endure through time because they contain questions that no era has ever been able to answer completely. “Carmen” is one of them. Since its controversial Paris premiere in 1875, when the Opéra-Comique witnessed an audience bewildered by a story centered on a woman who rejected the social and {…}
(Credit: Javier del Real) There are operas that survive by turning into monuments–and others by remaining dangerously alive. “Carmen” belongs to the second category. It refuses preservation. It resists comfort. And every so often, a production appears that reminds one why this work still unsettles rather than reassures. Production Details Damiano Michieletto’s “Carmen” at Teatro Real is one of those {…}
(Ph. Brescia – Amisano © Teatro alla Scala) In a suitcase–acquired expressly to transport it due to its weight and size–travels, rehearsal after rehearsal and performance after performance, the score of “Il nome della rosa,” weighing an impressive 15 kilograms. Yet the heft of this voluminous tome is not merely physical but also semiotic: it is the fruit of the {…}
(Photo ©2024 Camilla Greenwell) In a recent interview with director Damiano Michieletto at the Venice production of “The Tales of Hoffmann,” he said: “At its heart it is a journey into fantasy. It is opera fantastique, after all!” One definition of the French word fantastique is: a term for a literary and cinematic genre and mode that is characterized by {…}