As the 2025–26 season draws down this summer, we set to reflecting on how the hundreds of performances we’ve covered have stuck with us – specifically in the form of photography. World Photography Day is celebrated on 19th August, and we wanted to take a look at some of the most remarkable photography of productions and performances Bachtrack has covered this season.
Mark Pullinger: Earlier this year, I had the great joy of interviewing conductor Elim Chan. She had just flown back from Los Angeles for a concert with the London Symphony Orchestra. Her enthusiasm was infectious and we chatted for a good two hours (not everything made the interview!). The next day I watched her rehearsing the orchestra in Rachmaninov’s Symphonic Dances – Mark Allan’s series of press photos from that concert, taken from a tiny aperture in the back of the Barbican Hall stage, completely captures her personality. Here is someone who is clearly loving her job!
Elisabeth Schwartz: The floating opera stage at the Bregenz Festival never disappoints. Whether it’s this year’s broken mirror in Damiano Michieletto’s new production of La traviata, a gigantic clown (Rigoletto, Philipp Stölzl, 2019), colossal hands shuffling playing cards for Kasper Holten’s Carmen in 2017 or the all-seeing eye of the Madonna in Philipp Himmelmann's production of Tosca in 2007 – the spectacular sets will leave you breathless. James Bond (Daniel Craig in A Quantum of Solace) might have left during the Te Deum to protect Her Majesty, but I stayed until the end of my very first opera production and fell in love with the genre (and Tosca).
Tristan Labouret: Artist portraiture is a challenging art form, very different from concert photography. How can a single portrait capture some of the energy or poetry that is unique to musicians on stage? Nikolaj Lund is one of those creative photographers who isn’t content merely to take beautiful pictures and showcase the artists – he makes you want to book a ticket straight away to go and see them perform!
Deborah Weiss: One of the most enjoyable aspects of editing dance articles and reviews is choosing the photographs to accompany them. The best dance photography seems to fall into four main categories: images that convey the drama of a situation through the movement in the body; images that make you wonder how on earth the dancer achieved this and managed to land safely; those that depict extraordinary set and costumes and in the case of pure classical ballet, the perfection of a large corps de ballet pictured in straight lines or moving in unison. Among the other obvious things to note is whether the picture has been caught at the right moment. Are the feet stretched to the maximum? Is the jeté caught at the height of the jump? Would the dancer or dancers feel happy about the publication of the image? Are there signs of strain, or does the dancer look liberated?
It may seem odd to say, but Steven Pisano’s photographs always appear musical to me (from a dancer’s perspective). It’s as if he understands that the dancer must reach the height of the jump or movement within the correct timing of the music, which is why you look at his photos and feel the exhilaration of the phrasing. It’s the highest compliment I can pay to a photographer who sends so many excellent images that it makes the editors’ decision-making difficult – in a very positive way!
This is one of the best photos I’ve ever seen. Borres Casey looks as if she’s hanging in the air. How she got there and where she’s going is a mystery. She’s just flying around, totally free, a few feet up. It looks fearless and relaxed. It has that feel good factor that makes you want to go along for the ride.
Lawrence Dunn: Choosing a single image for the Bachtrack Editions Photo of the Month can be a difficult task – but a hugely gratifying one. With reviews of productions and performances of every size and shape, the photography can be intimate or grand in scale. One striking image that immediately caught my attention earlier in the year was Johan Persson’s photograph of Daniel Proietto in Russell Maliphant’s Afterlight. While it’s clear that Proietto is dancing (Afterlight is a solo work), there is something about the immediacy of the moment Persson captures that escapes its choreographic context – whether the depth of the surrounding darkness, or the folds of the cloth, reminiscent of Baroque drapery.
One characteristic of the photography frequently featured on Bachtrack is its studies of groups. To see massed, costumed similarity, in the form of operatic choruses and dance companies – not to mention orchestras – is something that remains visually arresting. A case in point comes with Ballet Preljocaj’s Swan Lake, who turn what can sometimes be a conventional work into something eerie and disconcerting. As captured by photographer JC Carbonne, the dancers are also distinctly physical. “Far from being ethereal creatures,” Julie Joswiak writes, “the swans are depicted as beings of flesh and blood”.
Consider two other groups from opera productions: a group of children in doll-like masks, caught in the middle of Mariusz Treliński’s staging of Die Frau ohne Schatten with Polish National Opera in February. Simultaneously serene and uncanny, they were “quietly threatening one moment, inspiring sympathy the next”, according to Hugo Shirley.
Compare another group, this time maskless, from the Donizetti Opera Festival in November. At a first glance the Accademia Teatro alla Scala Chorus look uniform, until one sees the diversity of facial expressions and eye directions. Francesco Micheli’s blocking is captured by photographer Gianfranco Rota with an easy directness.
Finally, perhaps my favourite study of an individual performer in an opera was Luise von Garnier as Belle in Philip Glass’ La Belle et la Bête, in a new production at Staatstheater Augsburg this May. Photographer Jan-Pieter Fuhr captures Jasna Bošnjak’s outrageous costume amid watery caustics, while von Garnier’s vacant expression encapsulates the hypnotic melancholy at the heart of Glass’ music.
See all reviews on Bachtrack and the latest Bachtrack Editions.
