Articles by Renato Verga

Frederic Wake-Walker sticks to a vapid pop-parody that demeans the intellectual message of Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos.

In Khovanshchina, even more so than in Boris Godunov, the chorus is the chief protagonist and the La Scala chorus was truly astonishing.

Il re pastore seems to be a work that deserves to be included in the repertoire for its undoubted qualities and not only because it foreshadows the genius of the works that will follow.

Three sopranos and three tenors express a catalogue of "affections" in musical numbers full of coloratura and virtuosic effects that are already 100% Mozart despite the young age of the composer.

The performance of the young French mezzo-soprano was admired more for its correctness than for its seductiveness.

Never before has human impotence been so cruelly portrayed on stage.

Graham Vick stages his Marriage of Figaro in todays vulgarity, but he is not fully convincing.

Female voices dominate in the vocal cast: Rachel Willis-Sørensen debuts as Leonora and charms the audience; Anna Maria Chiuri has the temperament and rich vocality requested by the role of the gypsy.

When they asked Wilson to stage an opera by Verdi, the Texan director replied "I'll never do it!". Now he is at his fourth Verdi's production.

A conventional plot retains few of the elements of its Arabian Nights original, but the Academy's young pupils display vocal mastery in Milan.

The imaginative baroque architecture of the Buontalenti Grotto in Palazzo Pitti Boboli Gardens is an inert background to the action in this reprise of one of the first operas.

Two different variations of the female conditions: one of 1909 and now utterly out-of-date, the second of 1959 much more ut-to-date.

In this Verdi's popular work we find a paroxysm of affections that is consonant with Matteo Beltrami's energetic conducting.

The use in the score of ancient musical instruments is what differentiates this work: pifferi, a lute, a “viola pomposa” give this work a distinctive flavour.

Director Davide Livermore sets the story at the time of the Dolce Vita, including the motorbike from the film Roman Holiday and the roadster from The Easy Life.

Every time Ponchielli’s La Gioconda is staged its popular fortune is renewed, but the diffidence of the musicography also remains unchanged.

In the Teatro Regio's production everything is according to the script, but the magic of the stage is absent. 

Juan Diego Flórez perhaps is the only one currently able to revive the virtuosity of the role created in 1762

Damiano Michieletto's new production in Venice sets the operetta in the 1950s. 

The Temple of Opera has opened its doors to operetta. For the first time the Teatro alla Scala is staging Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus.