That both the lead and a second key role were ill and couldn’t sing did not bode well, yet this performance of Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera shook up the house nonetheless.
Die Zauberflöte may well tell us something about the Human Condition, but its staging in Zurich serves more to distract from the music and the messages than it does to support them.
We spent last night in Zurich, where we had the chance to see the Zurich Opernhaus production of Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann. It’s the first time I’ve been to the opera house here and the first time I’ve seen Offenbach on stage, so interesting on both counts.
The opera house is “small but perfectly formed”, as the cliché goes.
