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At a time when the “relevance” is bandied around all too frequently in relation to opera, Martinů's really does deserve that tag. 

A daring double bill from Opera North and Phoenix Dance Theatre pairs Jeanguy Saintus' new choreography for The Rite of Spring with a revival of Christopher Alden's production of Gianni Schicchi. 

Christopher Alden’s production of Verdi’s Rigoletto returned to Toronto tighter, more focussed and with fewer dramatic incongruities. Add to this that every aspect of the music making was top notch and it made for a fine evening at the theatre.

Christopher Alden's account of Handel's love pentangle is long on Man Ray imagery and modern language wordplay, but never hits the vocal highs and eventually palls.

Christopher Alden's risk-taking, Expressionist-tinged production of the early Wagner breakthrough is provocative in all the right ways.

English National Opera’s first staging of Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece is a musical and dramatic triumph.

Alden’s mise-en-scène developed the most modern aspects of Il turco's libretto. The stage not only showed what the Poet was participating towards, but the other characters also seemed to perform the poet’s conception of his own work. 

Tragedy giving way to comedy – a recipe which still works, as demonstrated in Opera North's fine double bill of Gianni Schicchi and La vida breve.

Director Christopher Alden's charming Partenope slinks its Surrealist way into San Francisco.

Last night’s opening of Christopher Alden’s allusive, conceptual Rigoletto for ENO, a co-production with Canadian Opera Company, was a notable event for London opera. Musically, ENO have been on top of their game this season and last night was no exception.

This autumn is Strauss and Freud season in London: while the Royal Opera are showing Charles Edwards’s searingly Freudian take on Richard Strauss’s Elektra, ENO have opted for the polar opposite mood with Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus: Christopher Alden’s production is just as Viennese, just as laden with dreams and sexuality, but filled to the brim with gags and frivolous decadence.

Even Emperor Josef II would have thought this was a bad idea. The real-life monarch depicted in Peter Shaffer’s fictional play Amadeus quite memorably forbade ballet in his court operas. But the absurdity of the dancers carrying on with no music playing in Mozart’s Act III convinced the Emperor that he was in the wrong.

Henri Bergson famously defined comedy as “something mechanical encrusted on the living”. One suspects that Jacques Offenbach would have been a fan of this definition, and that Christopher Alden most certainly is.

It took me a while to warm to director Christopher Alden’s revisionist production of Johann Strauss II’s chestnut and whipped cream torte of an operetta, but gradually the outrageous battiness of it won me over.The story that Alden and his team fashion into a Freudian farce with touches of Bram Stoker goes like this.

It was a glass-smashing, balloon-popping, bearskin-wearing, strip-out-of-your-swimsuit-onstage kind of afternoon at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater for the opening of New York City Opera’s second production of the 2012 season, Mozart’s Così fan tutte.Even for people who’ve seen this opera before, I’ll bet they’ve never seen a Così like this one.

Bellini’s bel canto masterpiece Norma was once a staple of the operatic stage, performed by great sopranos such as Maria Callas and Joan Sutherland on a regular basis. Nowadays, despite containing one of the most famous arias of all time, it is performed less frequently.

The Canadian Opera Company’s second offering for its 2011-2012 season is Verdi’s ever-popular Rigoletto. It comes on the heels of Robert Carsen’s stunning production of Iphigenia in Tauris. In Carsen’s brilliant conception of the opera, everything works to produce a great night of opera By contrast in Christopher Alden’s production of Rigoletto just about nothing works.

Several audience members didn't bother to return after the interval, and there were a few walkouts even before that. It seems Christopher Alden's darkly brilliant new production isn't for everybody. But those of us who stuck it out for the full three hours were rewarded with a reminder that beneath the surface of the Shakespeare-based fairy fable lurk some disquieting truths.

"Intermezzo" has submitted an excellent and comprehensive review of the opening night of this classy new production, but I was so shocked to hear booing from neighbouring seats that perhaps I might be permitted to add this view from a relative opera novice? I've not seen this opera before, or even the Shakespeare play, so although I had nothing to compare it with, I also had nothing to miss in th

In Janáček's opera The Makropulos Case, the operagoer must accept a single premise of implausible fantasy: from then on, the action flows inexorably and logically to its conclusion. It's a device used by a great deal of fantasy literature, from the low-brow of The Day of the Triffids to the high-brow of Janáček's compatriot Kafka's Metamorphosis.

Christopher Alden trae al Teatro Real de Madrid una Parténope al estilo art decó dinámica de la que supo exprimir toda su comicidad.

Une mise en scène magistrale de Christopher Alden centrée autour de l’arbre sacré, sublime la performance d’Elza van den Heever qui interprète Norma pour la première fois.