ABAO-Bilbao opened 2026 with a production a Massenet’s masterpiece, “Werther,” with the Spanish tenor Celso Albelo stepping in after the sudden cancelation of the tenor cast for this role. The stage director Rosetta Cucchi presented a metaphorical production with showed hyperrealistic sets: like the living room at the first act or the library on the second act with symbolic elements {…}
After this summer’s “Un Ballo in Maschera,” the forces behind the Dutch label Pentatone are turning their attention to another heavy-hitter from the Italian repertoire: with “Tosca” they enter the well-trodden territory of one of the most recorded operas ever. Yet, Carlo Montanaro and the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester do not pretend to proverbially reinvent the wheel the way Rostropovich famously did in {…}
Credit: Prudence Upton First performed in Paris in 1835, Fromontel Halévy’s “La Juive” finally opened its first Australian season at Sydney Opera House on March 9, 2022, in this co-production between Opéra National de Lyon and Opera Australia. The production was to have been staged in 2020, but COVID-19 stymied those plans. Nevertheless, the determination of Opera Australia and a {…}
The Deutsche Oper Berlin has long been a mecca for iconoclast regie theater directors ranging from Hans Neuenfels and Claus Guth to Ole Anders Tandberg, whose recent staging of “Carmen” had more viscera on the stage than verismo. Curiously, the extant production of “La Traviata” by the former Deutsche Oper Intendant Götz Friedrich, dating back to 1999, is surprisingly uncontroversial. In his {…}
