There are pianists one admires, and then there are pianists who make admiration feel like an inadequate response. Igor Levit belongs to the second category — and the Brahms First…
MACBETH | Bayerische Staatsoper
Verdi was thirty-three years old. The great trilogy did not yet exist. Rigoletto, Trovatore, Traviata — none of it. And yet here he was, producing this: an opera about guilt…
IL TROVATORE | Opéra de Monte-Carlo
There is something quietly miraculous about Il Trovatore. Dismissed by snobs and adored by the masses, Verdi’s most melodically concentrated opera has always thrived on a certain paradox: the more…
DIALOGUES DES CARMÉLITES | Opéra de Marseille
A new production of Dialogues des CarmĂ©lites always raises the same fundamental question: how to reconcile the work’s metaphysical density with the radical simplicity it demands on stage. In Marseille,…
LES CONTES D’HOFFMANN | Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Few works demand such a precarious equilibrium between fantasy and coherence as Les contes d’Hoffmann. Too much caricature, and the piece collapses into vulgarity; too much restraint, and its surreal…
IL TROVATORE | Hamburgische Staatsoper
Il trovatore is, perhaps more than any other Verdi opera, a work of extremes: structurally fragmented, dramatically implausible at times, yet propelled by an almost unmatched musical urgency. It lives…
RIGOLETTO | Bayerische Staatsoper
New Rigoletto at the Bayerische Staatsoper. Should we go? And if so, why? For the story? Not really, as it belongs to that category of operas whose libretto reveals all…
ONEGIN | Bayerische Staatsoper
Created in 1965 by John Cranko and part of the repertoire of the Bayerisches Staatsballett since 1972, Onegin remains one of the most enduring narrative ballets of the 20th century….
FIDELIO | Bayerische Staatsoper
What a magnificent production of Fidelio by Calixto Bieito. A director whose work can sometimes feel conceptually overbearing here finds an almost perfect balance between strong imagery and dramatic clarity….