Canadian tenor Michael Schade confirmed his undisputed Mozartian credentials and brought vivid intensity to songs by Strauss at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
Bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni, in splendid voice and with great eloquence, traces the development of the Lied from Mozart to Schubert at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in Amsterdam.
Marc Albrecht’s tribute to Richard Strauss featured soprano Emily Magee in a poignantly elusive Four Last Songs and culminated in a stupendously played Thus Spoke Zarathustra.
Dutch National Opera opens its season with a musically and visually staggering world premiere: the first ever operatic staging of Arnold Schoenberg’s heaven-storming Gurre-Lieder.
A winning young cast discovers that all's not well that ends well in the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century’s virtuosic Così fan tutte at the Royal Theatre Carré in Amsterdam.
Pianist Markus Hinterhäuser’s brilliantly curated Winterreise juxtaposes the devastating interpretative powers of baritone Matthias Goerne with captivating animated images by William Kentridge.
Listening is the only requirement for travelling through the spatial soundscapes of Luigi Nono’s rarely performed masterpiece Prometeo. Looking almost got in the way at the Holland Festival.
Ambrogio Maestri reprises his star turn as a vocally and theatrically complete Falstaff in Robert Carsen’s lavish, food-fuelled situational comedy at the Holland Festival.
Brahms’ only song cycle, Die schöne Magelone, gets star treatment from baritone Michael Volle, pianist Helmut Deutsch and narrator Thomas Quasthoff at the Doelen in Rotterdam.
Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor is a coloratura soprano vehicle and this season’s Dutch National Opera production felicitously starred Jessica Pratt, an internationally celebrated Lucia and a favourite of the Italian public.
