(Photo Credit : Klara Beck) The Strasbourg Opera in collaboration with the Royal Opera House of Covent Garden and the Lausanne Opera is offering Handel’s “Ariodante” from November 6th-13th. The production will then go to Mulhouse on November 22nd and 24th. On closer inspection, this drama per musica announces many of the operas to come to amateurs. Thus, its three-act {…}
(Photo credit: Monika Rittershaus) “So, who is signing the work?” an operagoer asks Raphaël Pichon and Claus Guth at a lunchtime panel about their opera-project “Samson.” The music is Rameau’s, but it is not that simple. According to Guth (and his Wikipedia search), Rameau did indeed compose a “Samson” with a libretto by Voltaire; however, it is all lost. Pichon {…}
(Photo credit: Kost) The Festival Alte Musik Knechtsteden has announced its slate for 2024. Handel’s “Il Trionfo del tempo e del Disinganno” opens the festival. Dorothee Oberlinger directs the Ensemble 1700 with soloists soprano Lombardi Mazzulli, countertenor Alois Mühlbacher, and tenor Laurence Kilsby. Performance Date: September 21, 2024 The Academy for Early Music Berlin performs works by Handel, Geminiani, Vivaldi, {…}
Photo: © Marco Borrelli Berlioz’s “Les Troyens” is one of those operas that is larger than life. Arguably, two operas in one night. Everything sounds like the realization of romanticism’s epic promise and showcases the musicians’ talents overflowing in the hall. It is hard to not expect a lot from a performance of Berlioz’s opera with a revolutionary and Romantique {…}
Tenors Laurence Kilsby and Tae Hwan Yun have been announced as the Heidelberger Frühling Wettbewerb “Das Lied“ 2023. The first prize was awarded twice and seen to around 13,000 viewers who followed the livestream. Kilsby was joined by pianist Ella O’Neill from England, while Yun was joined by Dokyung Han from South Korea. The singing competition for Lied, founded by {…}
(Photo: Die Fotografen) The Innsbruck Early Music Festival’s Cesti Competition, now in its 13th year, continues to cement its standing as a prestige international singing competition for baroque specialists. The final, which took place in Innsbruck’s Haus der Musik in front of an enthusiastic audience, consisted of 10 singers from six countries, comprising two countertenors, five sopranos, two tenors and {…}
(Photo: Ruth Walz) It never ceases to surprise how Monteverdi’s operas prove themselves time and again to be not just supreme examples of how the art form succeeds as a dramatic medium, able to communicate directly with present day audiences, with characters who resonate so clearly with the modern mind, even over a distance of 400 years, but also the {…}
(Credit: Sasha Vasiljev / Mathias Bothor, Deutsche Grammophon) The Festival Aix-en-Provence has just announced the program for 2020 season, which will include a total of six works. The season will open with Berg’s opera “Wozzeck,” starring Christian Gerhaher, Anja Kampe, Daniel Brenna, Peter Hoare, Brindley Sherratt, Evan LeRoy Johnson, J’Nai Bridges, Alexander Kiechle, Tomasz Kumięga, and Graham Clark. Sir Simon {…}