The audience for The Met's first performance of La fanciulla del West this season arrived loaded for bear. Not only were they disappointed that Jonas Kaufmann was not singing (he's slated for shows starting 17th October), but their disappointment was heightened by the fact that tenor Yusif Eyvazov was singing.
The Royal Opera Orchestra produce a revelatory reading of Shostakovich’s eclectic score; a fine performance from Eva-Maria Westbroek and excellent acting from the whole cast light up the drama and farce.
An able cast sings in Christof Loy’s non-interventionist and insightful production of Verdi’s panoramic tragedy, conducted with vivid detail by Michele Mariotti.
Munich revived a thoughtful modern production of Janáček's Jenůfa, with fine orchestral direction and strong singing doing full justice to the rich score.
Clarity and mounting horror in the orchestra pit, the full truth and ugliness of the human condition onstage. Dutch National Opera’s new production of Wozzeck is stomach-churning for all the right reasons.
Gergiev and the Mariinsky excel in Act III of Tristan und Isolde with the help of star singing from Vekua, Westbroek and Nikitin; George Li shows promise in Liszt.
An aesthetically handsome but cold and distant staging mars the long-awaited return of Eva-Maria Westbroek as Puccini’s heroine at Dutch National Opera.
To celebrate its 50th birthday Dutch National Opera put on a festive tribute to the people that have made it the innovative and much-admired house it is today.
The Met brought back its traditional staging of Tannhäuser with remarkable performances by the Orchestra, Chorus and soloists, with two outstanding male singers.
Ruth Mackenzie, Holland Festival’s vivacious and invigorating new director, closed her first edition with a twelve hour Prom, reinventing it as a mini-festival at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw.
The Met's new production of Cav and Pag boasted strong musical performance, but its production, despite some interesting ideas, was not completely successful.
Royal Opera’s first rival of Anna Nicole opens to an enthusiastic student audience. Eva-Maria Westbroek dazzles, but second time round the work seems even more burned by its clumsy libretto.
The Philharmonia, Eva-Maria Westbroek and Christoph von Dohnányi explore swan songs of Richard Strauss, in his 150th anniversary this week, and Bruckner at the Royal Festival Hall.
If you've been brought up with the Judaeo-Christian ideal of an all-powerful, all-good God, Norse mythology can come as a bit of a shock. Wotan, the father of the gods, is philandering, deceitful, power-hungry, sentimental, violent and ultimately weak - the gamut of human frailties writ large.
David McVicar’s production of Berlioz’s opera Les Troyens at the Royal Opera House last month was notable for several reasons. Firstly, stellar vocal performances from world-class lead singers; secondly, brilliant acting; thirdly, ravishing music; and lastly, a memorable set – including a curious giant horse and human made out of what looked like scrap weapons and tools.
It's one of the most famous, most studied, most archetypal passages in epic poetry: in Book I of Virgil's Aeneid, the Trojans, exhausted from their voyage and desolate at the loss of their city, gaze down on the city of Carthage as it rises from the African soil, its people scurrying like worker bees in their manifold tasks.
Murder. Suicide. Grand larceny. Puccini's triptych of short operas, two tragedies followed by a riotous farce, always makes for an evening of variety, with the potential for many snatches of greatness.
In case you've somehow missed the hype, Anna Nicole is the Royal Opera's newly commissioned opera about the life of Anna Nicole Smith, a girl from Texas who married an elderly billionnaire, became a model and celebrity sex symbol who received gigantic media exposure, and died of a drug overdose a few months after the death of her son.
My last opera of the year was also my first Wagner: a new Covent Garden production of Tannhäuser, directed by Tim Albery and conducted by Semyon Bychkov.First things first: Bychkov was magnificent.
Unter der Leitung von Kiril Petrenko überzeugt die Bayerische Staatsoper in der gelungenen Neuinszenierung von Puccinis Il trittico mit meisterlichen Klängen und exzellenter Besetzung.
