We start with a triumphant Royal Opera debut from Stuart Skelton, we close with Nina Stemme at her finest; a thrilling orchestral performance links the two. A memorable Walküre.
“Beloved Friend” is the term Tchaikovsky used to address Nadezhda in his letters, and it is the title Semyon Bychkov has given to his Tchaikovsky series, of which this concert with the BBCSO closed the Barbican leg.
L’Opéra de Paris remet au goût du jour Capriccio de Richard Strauss dans la mise en scène deRobert Carsen. L’œuvre est magnifiée par une distribution remarquable et un orchestre en très grande forme.
With an uncertainly looming, the San Diego community rallied behind its beloved opera company to rescue, resuscitate and revamp while celebrating 50 years of commitment to the arts.
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.
Ariadne auf Naxos is the ideal Viennese opera: an entertainment by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal that satirises the relationship between composer and patron.
Semyon Bychkov gave a reading of such clarity and quality that everything seemed obvious. In his hands, the orchestra was a precision instrument, and for Strauss fans, whether or not you like Claus Guth's staging, this production is a must-see.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin kept the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra sounding especially lively and cohesive in this revival of Otto Schenk's enchanting production of Rusalka, starring Renée Fleming as the water nymph and Piotr Beczala as her lover.
Between acts, and between shows, the stage at Chicago’s Civic Opera House is usually blocked from view by a solid mural painted with baroque figures in gold – perhaps the gaudiest feature of an already fussily ornate hall. The gilt-painted screen was up, however, for Elektra, the first show of the Lyric Opera’s new season (along with Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra, which runs concurrently).
Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos was first performed in 1912, in a production directed by Max Reinhardt. Unlike the version usually seen today, this first Ariadne was a long-winded play-opera-ballet hybrid, incorporating a full production of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme with dances to incidental music by Strauss followed by the short opera.
