Articles by Sarah Batschelet

Members of the GöteborgsOperans dance company, along with members of choreographer Sidu Larbi Cherkaoui’s own Eastman ensemble, recently danced a joint venture of an extraordinary kind in Winterthur. 

Gaetano Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda is perhaps most famous for a single and highly emotional scene in which two monarchs engage in a venomous confrontation. One is doomed to die. 

The Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra under Jansons treated the Lucerne Festival audience to works by Schumann and Bernstein. But it was pianist Matsuev’s Rachmaninov that electrified the hall.

In a varied programme at Lucerne’s 2018 Easter Festival, Mariss Jansons conducted the BRSO and Choir in works by Stravinsky, Hummel and Beethoven.

Just as Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Le Sacre du Printemps opened up new musical horizons for dance at the start of the 20th century, Ballett Zürich’s Stravinsky evening sees two leading modern choreographers revive these works.

Heinz Holliger’s Lunea, which recently premiered at the Zurich Opera House, is “not an opera”, or so the ground-breaking Swiss composer contends.

Claus Guth’s grandiose production of Parsifal made major headlines in Zurich in 2011. With its new cast of principals, this revival is no less a sensation.

Made up of aspiring professional dancers from eight different nations, the Junior Ballett Zürich performs a programme of internationally renowned choreographers every two years.

In Jetske Mijnssen’s new production of Idomeneo, all order of human entanglements, sorrows and pain run rampant.

The Tonhalle Orchestra Zürich recently nestled a performance by the gifted American violinist Hilary Hahn into its programme of works by Janáček, Prokofiev and Dvořák.

Paavo Järvi conducted the Estonian Festival Orchestra that he founded in select works by Northern composers.

Zurich recently welcomed the Swiss premieres of two extraordinary ballets, one by choreographers Sol León and Paul Lightfoot, the other by Crystal Pite.

“Eat, dance, sing, and afterwards make love” was the motto for Parisian life, and their pursuit made up the greater part of this performance.

NDT2's triple bill of contemporary ballet that featured works by Marco Goecke, Johan Inger and Alexander Ekman in Alkmaar drew an uneven reception.

Apparently, the composer himself was a notorious cheater, we can assume that some of the unsavoury themes of his 1904 opera “Madame Butterfly” were close to the bone.

Celebrating a courageous woman who is able to secure the release of her husband from prison, Beethoven’s sole opera Fidelio has music that is more compelling that its plot.

Patricia Kopatchinskaja and the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich under conductor Teodor Currentzis brought the audience to its feet with works by Alban Berg and Dmitri Shostakovitch.

The gifted Norwegian pianist brought a programme of varied and demanding works to the fourth recital of Lucerne’s renowned Piano Festival.

The backstory doesn’t bode well: three fugitive criminals decide to found a city that will pander to society’s most vital needs: food, sex, warfare, and alcohol.

In Zurich’s new and provisional Tonhalle Maag, Omer Meir Wellber recently conducted a triple bill of works from the Baroque, Romantic and modern periods.