The volcano is already rumbling in the overture. Ăric Ruf’s set â blackened walls fissured with subterranean light, the floor tilting ever so slightly toward an invisible precipice â tells…
NORMA | Bayerische Staatsoper
There is no opera that punishes imprecision more ruthlessly than Norma. Every exposed line, every phrase of cantabile over the slow chromatic harmonies Bellini stretches beneath his priestess, demands absolute…
DIE ENTFĂHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL | Bayerische Staatsoper
Ultz‘s opening image for Martin Duncan‘s production announces itself without ceremony: a Turkish crescent on a blazing field, the geometry of civilizational conflict made literal, kitsch flirting with provocation. But…
MOZART / ZEMLINSKY | Orchestre National de France
Alexander Zemlinsky spent most of his career in the slipstream of more celebrated composers, and La Petite Sirène â the symphonic fantasy he wrote in 1902â03 as a coded autobiography…
VERDI | Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden
The Verdi Requiem had already been heard once in Paris this season â Gianandrea Noseda conducted it in March with the Zurich forces â which made Friday’s performance at the…
DVOĹĂK / MARTINĹŽ / STRAVINSKY / RAVEL | Concertgebouworkest
V pĹĂrodÄ â In Nature’s Realm â is the opening panel of a DvoĹĂĄk 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 OndĹej 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,…