V pĆĂrodÄ â In Nature’s Realm â is the opening panel of a DvoĆĂĄk triptych of concert overtures the symphonic circuit prefers to leave on the shelf, and on Friday…
LE NOZZE DI FIGARO | Dutch National Opera
Two scars across an otherwise glowing evening. Dutch National Opera‘s new Nozze di Figaro gives us Mozart at the level the work deserves on almost every front â a Netherlands…
HAYDN, ADĂMEK, BRAHMS | Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Two end-points of a great musical spectrum, the Gasteig brochure called this programme, with OndĆej AdĂĄmek‘s Where Are You? set between them as the unstable hinge. The copy, for once,…
IL TROVATORE | Bayerische Staatsoper
Caruso is supposed to have said that all Il trovatore requires is âthe four greatest singers in the worldâ â a line that has been gently mocked for a century,…
BRUCKNER 7 | Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France
The Adagio of the Seventh â written in part as a tombeau for Wagner, scored for the first time in Bruckner‘s output with four Wagner tubas â is the longest…
SIMON BOCCANEGRA | MĂŒnchner Rundfunkorchester
There is a snobbery about concert performances of opera that the genre rarely deserves and almost never bears out. Strip away the costumes, the projections, the trapdoors and the directorial…
BRAHMS / ELGAR | Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia
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 â and the Brahms First…
MACBETH | Bayerische Staatsoper
Verdi was thirty-three years old. The great trilogy did not yet exist. Rigoletto, Trovatore, Traviata â 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…