Artikel von Sarah Batschelet

In an entirely new version of the ballet, choreographer Christian Spuck wanted to explore the darker realms and fantasy of the ETA Hoffmann narrative that inspired Tchaikovsky’s suite.

Questionable identities, clandestine messages, love and money are the stuffs of Gioacchino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, revived again in Zurich.

This wasn’t just any concert. The Zurich Tonhalle’s new season was opening in a brand new hall in the trendy Züri-West quarter of the city.

Barrie Kosky’s atypically conservative production of the Russian classic was marked by musical direction and vocal performances of the highest order.

A Tchaikovsky and Dvorak programme at the Lucerne festival featured star violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter. 

A Dvořák-Schubert double bill at this year’s celebrated Schubertiade featured a host of extraordinary artists in a tight and dynamic performance.

Close to the start of this summer’s Lucerne Festival, Bernard Haitink conducted an outstanding performance of Mozart and Mahler works that span the centuries.

Conductor Riccardo Chailly launched this year's Lucerne Festival with a riveting programme of three late 19th century works by the great orchestral explorer, Richard Strauss.

Nestled in the alps, Musikdorf Ernen’s chamber music festival concerts recently began its annual Kammermusik Plus weeks with works that showcased some extraordinary young talents.

Die diesjährige Sommerinszenierung von Bizets Carmen auf der Seebühne Bregenz bietet ein großes Spektakel.

In a new production of Franz Lehár’s The Land of Smiles, the stoic Sou-Chong sets the melancholy tone of the operetta by singing “Smile despite your sorrows and a thousand.. aches and pains”.

Lydia Steier’s colourful production of Alcina in Basel was as much a lesson in conflict resolution as it was in the power of love.

That both the lead and a second key role were ill and couldn’t sing did not bode well, yet this performance of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera shook up the house nonetheless.

Johan Inger's new Peer Gynt ballet fails to convince in Basel

Two fine choreographers and the Orchestra La Scintilla heralded two world premiere performances of new ballets at the Zurich opera house.

Joseph Haydn’s opera Orlando Paladino was once cited as “a mixed salad of madness, mayhem and true love”. A recent revival in Zurich supports that assessment.

While a modern concert series staged in a one-time printing press couldn’t take the space farther from its first life, three musicians in Baden recently wrote a new kind of headline.

In the nearby city of Winterthur, Zurich’s fine International Opera Studio (IOS) recently premiered two short operas by Maurice Ravel, a flashy L’Heure espagnole and a lyrical L’Enfant et les sortilèges.

Even forty years after its world première in Rotterdam, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s new production of Philip Glass’s three-act opera in Basel has particularly timely relevance.

The charm of Gaetano Donizetti’s spirited two-act L’elisir d’amore lies in its mixture of sharp comedy and poignant pathos. Zurich gave us just that.