During the “Salce” and “Ave Maria” in Act Four Bezsmertna turned this to magical effect, thinning out and floating her shimmering soprano into gossamer threads.
Juan Diego Flórez was impressive in his first portrayal of a lovesick soldier/priest in Manon, with Nino Machaidze's accomplished heroine. Andrei Serban's modern and thoughtful production was still fresh and arresting.
The outstanding trio of Nylund, Stemme and Herlitzius soars above a Vienna State Opera Orchestra in thunderous form, led by Christian Thielemann to celebrate the Staatsoper's 150th birthday in style.
Vienna staged the first three-act performance of Lulu with Willy Decker adding to his 2000 production, with excellent singing contributing to its success.
German theatre director Uwe Eric Laufenberg freely incorporates some of Stanley Kubrik’s horror story concepts into his Elektra, but in ignoring both Sophocles and Strauss, is a long way from shining.
The Wiener Staatsoper revives a beautiful production of Daphne that juxtaposes myth, dream and reality, with brilliant vocal performances by the two leads.
High intensity girl power for a complex task: Simone Young shines in the pit, Karoline Gruber’s staging convinces with expertise and attention to detail.
A skilfully constructed production, and one that plays with the our perspectives. Whether the images are flashbacks from a war-troubled Wozzeck or a Büchner-esque portent of the horrors to come is left for the audience to decide.
Under Mariss Jansons, the Vienna Philharmonic are on top form in Shostakovich's opera; together with a top class cast of singers, they create sonic and emotional intoxication.
Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s minimalist staging brought the protagonists’ complicated psychological interaction into focus but to the detriment of Wagner’s myth and magic.
Sir David McVicar's production of Tristan und Isolde premiered at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2013, and was then recognized as a friendly platform for singers. Here it is freshly revived with a new cast.
Baroque purists might prefer a more surefire line-up of brilliantly executed arias, but the theatrical framework of Adrian Noble's Alcina production offers a great deal.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s impressive conducting, Tomasz Konieczny’s tortured Telramund and the Chor der Wiener Staatsoper save this performance of Lohengrin from becoming an ignominious swan song.
Strauss' penultimate opera is treated to a lavish if superficial staging at the Salzburg Festival, but the real rewards come from the musical performance of this unjustly neglected work.
A starrily cast performance of Puccini's early opera transcended the limitations of concert presentation to provide a very moving and musically rewarding account of the drama.
Within Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the darkest corners of the soul are exposed by music, stirred up by the lying, lecherous exploits of the aristocratic scoundrel, Don Giovanni.
When Salzburg Festival director Alexander Pereira stepped onto the stage of the Großes Festspielhaus last night to announce that one of the cast members of La bohème was sick and unable to sing, he faced a chorus of hisses from the audience. Soprano Anna Netrebko, the festival’s biggest non-conductor star, was feeling fine (though as Mimì she would shortly die of consumption).
Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal began their collaboration on Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow) with utopian ambitions. Unfortunately they weren’t the same ones. For Hofmannsthal, this would finally be the opera where his poetry would be illuminated by rather than buried under the music.
