It's a big night at the Opéra Bastille for their 350th anniversary season; Oropesa's dazzling coloratura stops the show; Andreas Kriegenburg sets the action interestingly in a Star Trek future.
Unlike the conucopia of duets Verdi wrote for soprano and baritone, his music for soprano and bass is much more limited and what exists is not exactly the acme of his output.
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.
Offenbach's vivid setting of E.T.A. Hoffmann's fantastic tales gets an enjoyable outing, with Spyres, Testé and Pudova the undoubted stars of the show.
Visually this production fully rendered the opera's atmosphere. The director was good at encompassing the private stories and emotions of the three main characters into a broader context, dominated by Fate.
Les Pêcheurs de Perles is a graceful if senseless piece, composed when Georges Bizet was only 25 years old and miles away from the psycho-musical drama of Carmen.
International opera stars Piotr Beczala, Diana Damrau and Nicolas Testé delight the public of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, but their vocal prowess do not quite compensate for an ill-constructed program.
Iain Bell’s new opera A Harlot’s Progress, premièred at the Theater an der Wien this month, has much going for it. Its chances for making it into modern repertory are good – if people can handle the depressing plot.
Puccini’s Tosca is no stranger to the stages of Paris. With almost 300 performances of this opera to date at the Opéra National de Paris, Tosca has become, alongside Mozart’s Le Nozze de Figaro and Bizet’s Carmen, a staple of Paris’ opera houses.However, such popularity opens up challenges.
Ein triumphales Hausdebüt von Adela Zaharia und eine hochklassige musikalische Gesamtleistung bescherten der Bayerischen Staatsoper einen "Wahnsinns-Abend".
Bei den Münchner Opernfestspielen begeistert Diana Damrau in einer musikalisch hochklassigen Interpretation von Lucia di Lammermoor und einer Inszenierung, die eher unspäktakulär bleibt.
En faisant le choix d’une modernité parfois triviale et brutale, cette nouvelle production déçoit quelque peu malgré la grande qualité du plateau vocal et musical.
Le 27 mai le TCE accueillait une version de concert de Lucia di Lammermoor avec les équipes du Teatro Regio de Turin sous la direction de leur charismatique directeur musical Gianandrea Noseda : au sein d'un cast de bon niveau, Diana Damrau a reçu un triomphe mérité dans le rôle titre grâce à une superbe maîtrise vocale, malgré une caractérisation quelque peu excessive.
Glücklich, wer ein Taschentuch zur Hand hatte - die historische Produktion von La bohème an der Bayerischen Staatsoper ist auch nach fast 50 Jahren noch so ergreifend wie eh und je.
Oper? Reality Show? Lotte de Beer inszeniert Bizets Perlenfischer als herrliche Dschungelcamp-Satire. Diana Damrau, Dmitry Korchak und Nathan Gunn beeindrucken unter der Leitung von Jean-Christophe Spinosi.
