Outstanding vocal and orchestral performances light up La Scala's season opener, matched to a conservative but visually arresting staging from Davide Livermore.
Verdi's fifth opera can be considered a blueprint for Trovatore and deserves a more regular place in the repertoire, but it needs more sincere advocacy than Bechtolf is prepared to grant.
Chung's mastery of orchestral colour and texture came into its own, the brooding introduction to Act 2 making for a harrowingly apocalyptic representation of tyranny.
Harding's grasp of the work's architecture that provides overall coherence. That, combined with the pithy, pulsing core he forges at its heart, makes this performance as engaging as it is polished.
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.
The work takes its inspiration from the life of the little known Italian composer Alessandro Stradella who ended his life stabbed by killers sent by the husbands of his innumerable mistresses.
Hartmann's staging takes a bizarre twist in the end since so far the staging had followed the naïve story very faithfully without any weird implications.
Director Davide Livermore updates the plot to the period of the Russian Revolution, October 1917, a far echo of that turning point in 1403 when the Ottoman sultan Bajazet was defeated by the Tartar Timburlaine.
The conductor favours measured tempi and unfussy direction, allowing the work to stand mountain-like as an expression of its own intrinsic magnificence.
The Scala Ballet performs a daring triple bill this Spring, showcasing young Italian choreographers alongside one of Balanchine's masterpieces, Symphony in C.
La gazza ladra celebrates its 200th anniversary with a new production at La Scala, an earthbound effort from director Gabriele Salvatores, but it was Riccardo Chailly who drew the wrath of sections of the Milanese audience.
Netrebko's Violetta is now fuller in body and voice than in her former incarnation. Goodbye to the fresh-faced damsel we saw in Salzburg; hello to a larger-than-life courtesan in her twilight years.
The 2013 Salzburg production of Damiano Michieletto's Falstaff finally arrives in Milan where the director sets the opera in “Casa Verdi”, the Milanese residence for elderly singers and musicians.
Were it not for a sterling musical display, built on the shoulders of bass Ferruccio Furlanetto and conductor Myung-whun Chung, this could have been a very long night indeed.
A beautiful production by Alvis Hermanis of Madama Butterfly to open La Scala's new season, but it was Riccardo Chailly's presentation of Puccini's original 1904 score which caught the ear.
At La Scala, Milan a disappointing tribute to Giorgio Strehler's historic staging of The Marriage of Figaro by young English director Frederic Wake-Walker.
La Scala might not have had all the right cards in its garter Tuesday night to prevent ending up holding aces and spaces, but it’s hard to play without a full deck in the first place.
Leo Nucci visceral animal of the stage has over 500 performances of the role under his belt, and, at the age of 73, he now eats this operatic challenge for breakfast
Verdi's take on the Joan of Arc story may be thin on drama, but outstanding playing from Riccardo Chailly and the La Scala orchestra and top notch singing from Netrebko, Meli and Álvarez make this a wonderful Verdian evening.
The set is a stark, grubby nonentity. A central concave structure spits out each scene's requisites, flashing up like apparitions from the vortex of Wozzeck's mind.
A charmingly-retro, Naïf Art production of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore at Teatro alla Scala provided a refreshing departure from the minimal, post-apocalyptic devastation trends of modern stagecraft.
This is a well-oiled operatic machine, with all of the cogs whirring. Act I's garret crackles and pops in a slick stream of gags both familiar and new.
After an absence of 145 years, Teato alla Scala staged Gioachino Rossini's Otello in a painterly Jürgen Flimm production, sparse set inspired by conversations with Anselm Kiefer.
Six years after its contested 2009 world première at the Metropolitan Opera, Luc Bondy's disputed production of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca bowed its third Teatro alla Scala staging here on Monday night.
The auditorium's lights flared up, drawing a blinking audience back into the room. The fourth wall was well and truly broken, and each of us was given no option but to acknowledge our responsibility for the planet.
Riccardo Chailly kicks off his interim role as Principal Director at La Scala with Turandot, featuring Luciano Berio's ending, a score he knows like the back of his hand.
On a balmy evening in Milan, there was anticipation in the air as queues stretched way back for a sold out performance of Carmen. But a flat atmosphere soon fell in the auditorium itself, with lacklustre singing and confused staging to blame.
With elegant sets and superlative musicianship, Verdi came to life in the House where he is revered most. This musical feast will have us licking our lips for some time yet.
Pared-down sets and minimal stagework draw eyes and ears forward in concentration. Whilst the text is at times searingly erotic, Nero and Poppea never touch.
Tonight's setting of Die Soldaten in a WWI stable is so sordid you can almost feel the rats gnawing. Alvis Hermanis was right to warn in a newspaper interview that we would leave the theatre feeling shocked.
Faith and glamour have bookended this year’s Salzburg Festival, a move met with incredulity in certain quarters and yet one not entirely alien to Austrian customs, if one looks to the 20 or so most glittering events of the Viennese ball season, which is promptly curtailed by Ash Wednesday (still observed by much of the population here with high Catholic asceticism).
