The weekend promised to be… magnificent!With three operas across two different festivals — Aix-en-Provence to start, and the ChorĂ©gies d’Orange to wrap things up on Sunday — the program featured…
DER FREISCHĂśTZ | Bregenzer Festspiele
By the end of the day, our hopes that it would take place where we had wished were fading. The stifling afternoon heat, a harbinger of meteorological unrest, suggested that…
LES PĂŠCHEURS DE PERLES | Festival d’Aix en Provence
What a discovery! Why hadn’t I experienced this before? I’ve seen three or four Les PĂŞcheurs de Perles live on stage in the past, but this time… I don’t know…
DON GIOVANNI | Festival d’Aix en Provence
To “give of oneself”: definition — To make a personal effort or sacrifice; to invest one’s time, energy, or physical presence in helping or participating in something. There is no…
NORMA (cast 2) | Teatro Alla Scala
Temple of opera or Disneyland of classical music? Even in the scorching Italian summer, Teatro alla Scala manages to monopolize newspapers and television, media and social media. For days, two…
LES CONTES D’HOFFMANN | Opernhaus ZĂĽrich
One of the really cool things about loving opera in general is that it’s like a bottomless well—just like good wine, or our culinary tastes, we evolve with time. The…
LE NOZZE DI FIGARO | Glyndebourne
What an afternoon! On this July Saturday, in its usual and ever-so-picturesque misty setting, the Glyndebourne Festival offers us a magnificent tribute to Mozart’s sublime masterpiece — a pinnacle of…
LA TRAVIATA | Teatro Real Madrid
The Teatro Real’s revival of Willy Decker’s legendary 2005 staging of La Traviata was nothing short of extraordinary. This minimalist yet deeply expressive production continues to captivate with its symbolic…
NORMA | Teatro alla Scala
Decades of waiting—yes, literal decades—had gone by without Norma being staged in the most iconic theatre of the Italian repertoire. You can imagine my reaction when, in May 2024, I…