In Georges Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles, two men’s vow of eternal friendship is threatened by their love for the same woman. Only one man lives to tell the tale.
In Zurich, ballet director Christian Spuck recently launched the second season of the multi-layered ballet he choreographed to the great P.I. Tchaikovsky score.
Barrie Kosky’s production of Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten (The Branded) is in keeping with what was long considered one of the early 20th century’s most scandalous works.
Gaetano Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda is perhaps most famous for a single and highly emotional scene in which two monarchs engage in a venomous confrontation. One is doomed to die.
Just as Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka and Le Sacre du Printemps opened up new musical horizons for dance at the start of the 20th century, Ballett Zürich’s Stravinsky evening sees two leading modern choreographers revive these works.
Claus Guth’s grandiose production of Parsifal made major headlines in Zurich in 2011. With its new cast of principals, this revival is no less a sensation.
Grimaud married incredible precision and rigour with moving sensitivity and ease. She led the listener clearly through the score without dropping a detail, but never gave the feeling that she was micro-managing.
Apparently, the composer himself was a notorious cheater, we can assume that some of the unsavoury themes of his 1904 opera “Madame Butterfly” were close to the bone.
Celebrating a courageous woman who is able to secure the release of her husband from prison, Beethoven’s sole opera Fidelio has music that is more compelling that its plot.
The backstory doesn’t bode well: three fugitive criminals decide to found a city that will pander to society’s most vital needs: food, sex, warfare, and alcohol.
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.
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”.
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.
Not all choreographers take on a gruelling tabletop assignment before defining the movements of a performance. Yet to reconstruct the 1895 Mariinsky Theatre production of Swan Lake, Alexei Ratmansky did just that.
In the hands of director Hans Neuenfels, the Swiss première of Manfred Trojahn’s Orest was widely anticipated for its “splashes of gore and commensurate splatters of sound”.
Just as rereading a favourite novel can give the reader new literary impulses to explore, so, too, can the revival of a popular ballet offer a fresh interpretation.
Christian Spuck’s new ballet Messa da Requiem in Zurich, is a breathtakingly powerful achievement. But its profound impact is spurred by more than dance alone.
Andreas Homoki’s new production of Vincenzo Bellini’s I puritani wows with a quartet of stellar vocalists, but its awkward staging and set design are a distinct disappointment.
Christian Spuck’s marvellous ballet "Der Sandmann" (Sandman) was first performed in Stuttgart in the spring of 2006, but this marks its first run in Zurich.
Anyone expecting a wishing well, castle and healthy portion of pomp in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s new production of Pélleas et Mélisande is in for a big surprise.
At the Zurich opera house, ballet director and chief choreographer Christian Spuck employs emotionally charged imagery and highly acrobatic dance technique to tell the story his way.
Barrie Kosky’s new Macbeth is devoid of riff-raff, shrill costumes and anything trivial. Instead, it’s a feast for the imagination, a case for modern opera at its very best.
Spanish conductor Gustavo Gimeno conducts a triple-bill programme of Russian music at the Zurich opera house, featuring the gifted Latvian violinist, Baiba Skride.
In Zurich, a dazzling production of Puccini's great Turandot gives us the stuff of torment, torture and all the other idiosyncracies of love at the executuve level.
Zurich’s revival of Georges Bizet’s three-act opera Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers) pulls out all the stops, but it was not to everyone’s liking.
