I thought I was just coming to a “simple” back-to-season concert version of Norma for a single performance at the Bern Opera… but what I actually witnessed on August 31…
LA CAMBIALE DI MATRIMONIO | Rossini Opera Festival
His first opera to be performed on stage, “La cambiale di matrimonio” was composed by Rossini when he was just 18, having been hired as an opera composer for the…
L’ITALIANA IN ALGERI | Rossini Opera Festival
The second new production of the Rossini Opera Festival was l’Italiana in Algeri, one of the Pesaro composer’s most performed works and a masterpiece of the genre “opera buffa. Composed…
ZELMIRA | Rossini Opera Festival
“ciò che mi conforta è la certezza di aver Scritto bene, del resto poco mi curo” “What comforts me is the certainty of having written well, I don’t care about…
NORMA | Gstaad Menuhin Festival
So… this was my 5th year in a row at the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, after highlights like I Puritani and a magical Tosca two years ago. This time, it was…
DIE SCHWEIGSAME FRAU | Staatsoper Berlin
The work is far too rare for us to allow ourselves to miss it. It is, alas, the sole collaboration – vivid, vibrant and luminous – between Richard Strauss and…
TRISTAN UND ISOLDE | Bayreuther Festspiele
Some weather websites predicted it would be der heiĂźeste Tag des Jahres. We didn’t try to confirm how accurate that was… but instead saw for ourselves just how wrong the…
NABUCCO | Soirées Lyriques de Sanxay
Why on earth hadn’t I been here before? That’s the question that inevitably lingers after a summer opera evening in Sanxay—along with that unmistakable sense of well-being that comes only…
RIGOLETTO | Arena Verona Festival
To close my two-week festival stay in Verona, it could only be with a masterpiece by Verdi. And even though I had already seen this particular masterpiece 11 times live…