Performer: Stefano Poda

Visual symbolism and musical ambition in a production at the George Enescu International Festival. 

A strong cast and an inspiring production deliver the latest opera staged at the Rossini Opera Festival.

Stefano Poda's staging has its own coherence, but it is as cold as the Chinese princess. 

Underwhelming performances, all too tempestuous conducting and an aesthetically pleasing but puzzling production fail to thrill.

Stefano Poda’s deeply intellectual mis-en-scene immersed the bourgeois love affair between Marguerite and Faust in an abstract and transcendental tangle of philosophical, existential and liturgical motifs. However, an overflowing symbolism sounded sometimes academic, but the visual effects were suggestive if not properly enchanting.

Pour son ouverture de saison, l’Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège propose une version exemplaire de l'ouvrage de Verdi : mise en scène, direction musicale et distribution vocale s'accordent idéalement pour restituer la noirceur du drame.