La Scala’s brave decision to open the new season with Shostakovich’s masterpiece is a courageous choice: the audiences who fill the theater on St. Ambrose’s Day in evening gowns and…
LES CONTES D’HOFFMANN | Opéra National de Lyon
After Venice, Sydney and London, the production of Les Contes d’Hoffmann as seen through the eyes of Damiano Michieletto has arrived in Lyon for the end-of-year holiday season. We will…
IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA | Teatro Comunale di Bologna
After missing a performance of La Bohème due to a car accident between Parma and Bologna, I absolutely had to make it up to myself and return to this city…
ERNANI | Teatro Filarmonico di Verona
I have to say it straight away: I was genuinely happy that evening. Not only because I was about to hear Ernani — an opera that is sadly not staged…
HÄNSEL & GRETEL | Bayerische Staatsoper
Some performances remind us that opera is, above all, an art of sharing — and this matinée was a perfect example. The auditorium was quite literally filled with children: tiny…
CHRISTMAS EVE | Bayerische Staatsoper
Some works seem tailor‑made to ignite a theatre’s imagination, and Rimsky‑Korsakov’s Christmas Eve is certainly one of them. The Bayerische Staatsoper presents a new production by Barrie Kosky, a director whose baroque…
LOHENGRIN | Teatro Dell’Opera di Roma
Opening a season in Rome is never a trivial gesture. In Italy more than anywhere else, a first night carries symbolic weight: it sets an artistic direction, commits an institution,…
CHOWANSCHTSCHINA | Staatsoper Berlin
Moussorgsky’s Chowanschtschina stands as a singular achievement: a human comedy transposed into music, a vast operatic river whose currents are as intricate as Balzac’s narrative designs. Rarely performed, its very…
DON GIOVANNI | Opéra de Massy
The concept astonishes, the impact resounds. Thus begins an evening in which, summoned to the stage, the orchestra ignites from the very first bars of an overture foreshadowing the fatal…
NORMA | La Monnaie de Munt
For my last European weekend trip by plane, my heart was set on Norma in Brussels. After Milan, Gstaad, and Bern, I wanted to revisit Bellini’s masterpiece, especially with everything…