(Credit: Monika Rittershaus) Two new productions of “Norma” collided in a strange surfeit of Bellini in Vienna in February and March. What an interesting opportunity to get to grips with the Gauls twice in a row, a case of “Buy one ‘Norma’, get one free!” First up was the Theater an der Wien, in a staging by Vasily Barkhatov and {…}
Welcome back for this week’s look at the latest CD and DVD releases in the opera world. This week audiences will get to hear and see new holiday albums, a Puccini album, and rarely performed works. Here is a look at what to buy this season. Puccini The celebrated tenor Freddie De Tommaso celebrates Puccini in a new album with {…}
The Arena di Verona has announced its 2025 season. Verdi’s “Nabucco” will get a new production. Stefano Poda will direct the new production. Amartuvshin Enkhbat, Youngjun Park, Luca Salsi, and Igor Golovatenko lead the cast that includes Anna Pirozzi, Maria José Siri, Anna Netrebko, and Olga Maslova as Abigaille, Francesco Meli and Galeano Salas as Ismaele. The cast is rounded out by Roberto {…}
(credit Julian Baumann) Les Grand Voix has changed the program to an upcoming concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The Oct. 7 concert, which was originally set to feature Adriana Gonzalez and Freddie De Tommaso in duos and arias by Puccini, Ponchielli, Bizet, and Cilea alongside Victorien Vanooster and the Orchestre de l’Opéra de Toulon, will now only feature the {…}
A truly packed house, a cast of operatic luminaries and a program of works chosen and compiled by Maestro Pappano himself; a Gala, fit for a KING, surely? Which is just as well because His Royal Highness King Charles III was in the audience as a truly surprise guest of honor, courtesy of a massive covert security operation that even {…}