At the Theater an der Wien, director Mariame Clément and novelist Lucy Wadham have crafted innovative material that brings the old-fashioned lyrics to life in a coherent and contemporary dramatic setting.
Themed around legendary African queens Dido and Cleopatra, Prohaska’s recital with the virtuosi of Il Giardino Armonico could serve as a template for the ideal Baroque programme.
Director Michael Thalheimer staging Weber’s Der Freischütz entirely in the Wolf’s Glen, albeit relocated from a “fearsome forest gorge” to what looks like a badger’s sett.
In a thoroughly riveting recital at the Concertgebouw, soprano Anna Prohaska probes Ophelia’s psyche through songs from the nineteenth century onwards.
Zabou Breitman brings silver screen glamour to Paris Opera's production of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, with the show stolen by Anna Prohaska's Blonde.
With speculation rife as to whether Sir Simon Rattle will become principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra upon departing from the Berlin Philharmonic, this electrifying concert provided a tantalising glimpse of what the future might have in store.
Robert Carsen’s production is an exercise in extreme minimalism. Dialogues des Carmélites is a great opera, and this production touches greatness without quite grasping it in both hands.
My mother always told me not to sit too close in the theatre, and after seeing this revival of Martin Kusej’s modern realization of Stravinksy’s The Rake’s Progress at the Theater an der Wien, I think I know what she was talking about.Act I begins innocuously enough in a sparse apartment, unfurnished apart from a mattress and a television.
The Theater an der Wien has a storied history with Fidelio, having hosted the première of the work’s first and second versions in 1805 and 1806 respectively.
There are some musical compositions that have always been a bit of a gamble, for composers, performers and even listeners. They might be exceptionally difficult, require extraordinary forces, or show such originality as to be perpetually startling.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s life was not that of an isolated contemplative but rather full of personal frustration, eventually ending in syphilitic madness. While his work has been often linked with music--most notably in his relationship with Wagner and Richard Strauss’s tone poem based on Also sprach Zarathustra--making his life into an opera may seem a dubious proposition.
Mit Faurés Requiem und Saint-Saens Orgelsymphonie bilden zwei spätromantische Werke das Programm des Chorkonzertes der Salzburgerfestspiele, in dem besonders der Chors des BR beeindruckt.
