The world has come to an end and we are at the end of the world, the collapsed ruins of a bridge that can no longer be crossed. There is no greenery; the few trees that are left are dead and being chopped down for fuel. Shell-shocked survivors wander through this hellscape, fighting over the scraps of whatever is left. This is the milieu of director Calixto Bieito’s Parsifal seen at the Stuttgart Staatsoper on Sunday March 20. Read more »
Three of the Met’s most cunning vocalists, Juan Diego Flórez, Joyce DiDonato and Diana Damrau, wrap their tongues around the trio from Le Comte Ory. Read more »
This just in from the Met press office: “On the advice of his doctors, James Levine will reduce his conducting dates at the Met for the rest of the current season while he continues to recover from recent procedures to alleviate back pain. His planned performances of Das Rheingold on March 30 and April 2 will be conducted by Fabio Luisi, while those of Il Trovatore on April 20, 23, 27, and 30 will be conducted by Marco Armiliato. Read more »
Pornography being the seminal [sic] art form of our time, through which every other art is interpreted (I lament this, but what can you do?), and opera being in one of its periodic up-cycles, new ones being composed and premiered, old ones being dusted off for re-use, and stage directors feeling impelled, as they do, to reinterpret the classics through the chic, pornographic lens, it seems extraordinary that so few new operas are written on situations that would fit the time.
Just five hours from now: Parsifal! Musikalische Leitung: Manfred Honeck; Regie: Calixto Bieito; Gurnemanz: Attila Jun; Amfortas: Gregg Baker; Parsifal: Andrew Richards; Klingsor: Claudio Otelli: Kundry: Christiane Iven; Titurel: Matthias Hölle.
Opera is about the possibility of transformation. An unassuming woman can walk in through the theater’s stage door and emerge on stage as fiery princess capable of making the walls rattle. Alas, these transformations inevitably fail to stick. Every Turandot must hang up her crown; every Elektra must put down her ax one final time. All performers must live with the regret of no being able to perform. Still must it not be better to have been able to perform and then regret what one can no longer be than to never to have tried? This question is at the [...]
Kasper Holten, director of the hunkalicious film Juan as well as current artistic director of Royal Danish Opera, will succeed Elaine Padmore as director of opera at the Royal Opera House starting next year. [The Stage]
First night in Berlin, since the feared jet lag did not, in fact, do your doyenne in, was spent at the Komische Oper seeing Die Entführung aus dem Serail in the “notorious” Calixto Bieito production. La Cieca’s opinion?
Cher Public