Jane Archibald and Ruxandra Donose provide a compelling prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos, while Karita Mattila's majestic performance lights up the opera seria second half.
Zabou Breitman brings silver screen glamour to Paris Opera's production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, with the show stolen by Anna Prohaska's Blonde.
Smetana wrote Prodaná nevěsta (“The Bartered Bride”) as a light Czech folk piece in a playful reply to critics who said that his music was too Wagnerian, or too German for that matter – something not compatible with the growing Czech national consciousness in the period he composed it (1863–66), even though he only showed mild interest in the Czech cause.
How to stage The Abduction from the Seraglio in Vienna, a city not exactly known for its sensitivity towards its Turkish minority? Mozart’s opera doesn’t, it should be said, contain nearly as much politically incorrect embarrassment as the rhetoric of some of Austria’s modern-day political parties, but the abusive boor Osmin and the Western women enslaved by his short-fused ganglord are imag
