Performer: Chœur d'enfants de l'Opéra National de Paris

In Paris, Russian enfant terrible reunites Iolanta with The Nutcracker... with wildly mixed results. 

​In each case, you know the murder is coming. In each case the music is explosive and closes the opera: there is nothing left to say except Canio's simple words: "La commedia è finita.

Otello, Verdi’s penultimate opera, is a tightly-wound setting of Shakespeare’s familiar tragedy. From the opening storm to the title character dying upon a kiss, it is more fragmentary and emotionally cool than his earlier work, an opera that tends to be more admired than loved.

Puccini's Il Trittico, performed last night at the Opéra Bastille in Paris, is a unique item in the repertoire: a series of three one act operas with little to link them except the composer's conceit of what would work together in an evening. Each opera clocks in at something under an hour, and despite the relatively short duration, each has plenty of time to develop its characters.

Le metteur en scène fait résonner le sens universel et multiple de l'œuvre de Debussy, dans une production excellente sur tous les plans, de la direction musicale (Antonello Manacorda) à la distribution.

Si la chorégraphie de Rudolf Noureev n'est pas la plus féerique, on ressort du ballet avec des étoiles dans les yeux, notamment grâce au duo formé par Paul Marque et Inès McIntosh.