(Photo: Ruth Walz) Like other fairytales, Richard Strauss’ opera, “Die Frau ohne Shatten,” with its cast of human and supernatural beings, otherworldly locations and a magical plot, makes use of symbols and metaphor to carry deeper messages and thus opens itself up to a wide range of interpretations. Katie Mitchell, the director for Dutch National Opera’s recent production, certainly took {…}
On May 17, Kirill Serebrennikov was awarded Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur. The director, who is currently in rehearsals for a new production of “Boris Godunov” for Dutch National Opera, was honored at the Cannes Film Festival by Minister of Culture Rachida Dati. Serebrennikov is at Cannes as his upcoming film “The Disappearance of Josef Mengele” will premiere at the {…}
The Dutch National Opera is set to present “Boris Godunov” in a new production by Kirill Serebrennikov. In his new staging, Serebrennikov is tackling a work that means a great deal to him. Drawing on the photography of Markov, Serebrennikov shows a cross-section of a block of flats typical of the ones built en masse during the Soviet period. There is {…}
(Photo credit: Koen Broos) Over the past twenty years or so, there have been plenty of programs on television, radio and the internet devoted to oral history, in which everyday people recall major and minor events along with the social and economic conditions from their own past to create an anecdotal montage that can be accessed by current and future {…}
The Dutch National Opera is set to perform Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” on tour in concert performances. The company will partner with Opera Zuid and Nederlandse Reisopera and will be touring the Netherlands with a Purcell programme centred around the short opera “Dido and Aeneas.” This music from more than 300 years ago will be interpreted by members of the {…}
(Photo: Michel Schnater) The second major presentation of this season’s Dutch National Opera’s ‘Opera Forward Festival’ was a short opera lasting approximately an hour by composer Bas Gaakeer to texts by Gregory Caers and Jasmijn van Wijnen called “Codes.” Of course, one does not always know what to expect from the operas that will be performed; after all, it is {…}
The Dutch National Opera has announce dits 2025-26 season. Elena Stikhina and Natalya Romaniw star in Puccini’s “Tosca” with Joshua Guerrero and Gevorg Hakobyan. Nathalie Stutzmann conducts. Performance Dates: Sept. 3-25, 2025 “Operetta Land” will be performed featuring music by Johann Strauss II, Jacques Offenbach, and Arthur Sullivan. Steef de Jong, Raoul Stefani, Marc Pantus, Laetitia Gerards, Elenora Hu, Frederik {…}
Marc Albrecht has been named the next Chief Conductor of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra. Starting in the 2026-27 season, Albrecht will assume the new role. Before his official appointment, he will appear with the orchestra as Chief Conductor Designate during the 2025-26 season. The German conductor is particularly known for his interpretations of late-Romantic German-Austrian repertoire and contemporary music. He {…}
The Dutch National Opera is set to present the world premiere of Philip Venables’s latest opera “We Are The Lucky Ones.” The opera will be shown at the Opera Forward Festival 2025 and will mark the fourth collaboration between Philip Venables and Ted Huffman based on real-life interviews. “We Are The Lucky Ones” tells the story of a generation and {…}
The Dutch National Opera is set to present Rudi Stephan’s “Die ersten Menschen.” The work tells the story of the first family in the Biblical history of humanity, Adahm, Chawa, and their two sons Kajin and Chabel. Directed by Calixto Bieito, the director situates the primeval conflict in a modern-day setting reminiscent of the family dinner in Luis Buñuel’s film {…}
(Photo: Dutch National Opera/Monika Rittershaus) (*** Trigger warning based on explicit content & suicide ***) “Le Lacrime di Eros” takes the audience back to the Italian city states of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a period still basking in the afterglow of the High Renaissance, in which the artworks of Da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo hung in the {…}