“Since I have never in my life enjoyed the true happiness of love, I intend to erect a further monument to this most beautiful of dreams, a monument in which…
VIOLANTA | Deutsche Oper Berlin
The work is as rare as it is concise (barely eighty minutes) yet sufficiently incandescent to leave upon its listeners an imprint commensurate with the ardour of its passions and…
L’ELISIR D’AMORE | The State Opera – Prague
If there is one place where I feel comfortable, at ease, and truly at home, it is the State Opera in Prague. I defend this theater, which is so dear…
TURANDOT | Deutsche Oper Berlin
I hesitated for a long time before writing the lines that follow. You know Opera Diary’s primary motivation: to inspire audiences to go to the theater and to focus only…
TOSCA | Staatsoper Berlin
Friday the 13th may carry a reputation for bad luck, but at the Staatsoper Berlin, there was nothing unfortunate about this Tosca. Having seen countless productions of Puccini’s masterpiece over…
FAURÉ · SAINT‑SAËNS · PROKOFIEV | Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Symphonic & Theatric — A Natural Rhyme Some programmes barely need a stage: they play in images, and this one certainly did. Fauré’s Pelléas et Mélisande Suite unfolded less like a set…
COSI FAN TUTTE | Opera de Monte-Carlo
Don Alfonso sings, “The faith of women is like the phoenix; everyone says it exists, but no one knows where it is!”, paraphrasing a famous aria by Metastasio. The third…
DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG | Staatsoper Stuttgart
Opening night for this production, and for many of its soloists as well: no fewer than seventeen role débuts. A distinct air of renewal, then, for an opera that demands…
DER SCHATZGRÄBER | Deutsche Oper Berlin
Restraint touched with elegance returns to the stage of the Deutsche Oper in this revival of Der Schatzgräber, in Christof Loy’s staging, long acclaimed wherever it has been seen. In…
MADAMA BUTTERFLY | Bayerische Staatsoper
There are evenings when the drama onstage doesn’t so much begin as unfold from the breath of its singers — when the emotional temperature is set not by the podium…