Artiste: Deborah Humble

Joining Music Director Jaap van Zweden were some familiar faces who had appeared in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in the same or different roles, and new faces appearing for the first time.

Saffron Opera Group's opening salvo bodes exceptionally well for their planned full cycle of concert performances of Wagner's Ring over the next two years. 

Singapore’s amazing Orchestra of the Music Makers presents Mahler’s “Gift to the Entire Nation,” his massive Eighth Symphony, as part of the celebrations marking the country’s 50th anniversary as an independent state.

Earnest singing and dramatic insight made Das Rheingold with the Hong Kong Philharmonic a remarkable evening. 

I have always been skeptical of concert performances of operas. Operas are written to be acted, and the staging is needed to complement the music. This is what I thought before I saw this performance of Ashkenazy conducting the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Sydney Children’s Choir in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades.

Korngold’s Die tote Stadt is an extraordinary opera, an often underrated masterpiece of the 20th century. On the face of it, it has a simple plot – the protagonist Paul, unable to overcome the death of his wife, falls in love with another woman, Marietta, similar to his dead wife in many ways.