So, Piotr Beczala (left) has gone and blabbed to Luister, which is some sort of Dutch glossy classical music magazine, that he’s not going to work with “stupid, idiotic and far-fetched” directors like “Calixto Bieito… Hans Neuenfels and Martin Kusej,” no, don’t ask him, he just won’t do it. Read more »
“One of the things I’m gradually learning as I’m coming up my the 20th anniversary of writing about opera for publication is that you have to be wary about making Pronouncements, because no matter how obvious or intuitive a hard-and-fast rule seems to be, if you write it down where people can find it, one of these days it’s going to embarrass you.” Our Own JJ contemplates François Girard‘s production of Parsifal in the latest installment of Rough and Regie. Read more »
As with all good myths, certainly all the myths at the heart of Wagner’s operas, the juggling of symbols and archetypes and themes in Parsifal opens the piece to a great variety of interpretations. Many recent productions have twisted things in a way that seemed to strain or defy Wagner’s intricate libretto and lush, meticulous score: gray springtimes in a world beyond nuclear or environmental holocaust, that sort of thing. But the world of Wagner’s tale is, like our own, a world in crisis, on a razor’s edge. That’s bound to resonate with contemporary directors. They then have many options in setting out the workings of the crisis in this fable of a solution to whatever may be broken. Read more »
Like the hero of Parsifal, who finds the Holy Grail after a lifetime of frustrated wandering, the Met’s audience was finally rewarded for its patience.
The new Boris Godunov from the Bayerische Staatsoper (directed by Calixto Bieito and conducted by Kent Nagano) looks absolutely remarkable.
No, not a Regie quiz—though that feature will return soon enough now that the season is up and running—but rather an image from the new Dmitri Tcherniakov production of Jenufa for the Opernhaus Zürich.
La Cieca has always, against all odds, maintained that if there is one expression that best describes the mind of the average member of the cher public, that would be “plus vive que l’oiseau, plus prompte que l’éclair.”
Zachary Woolfe (not pictured) makes his way to Bayreuth to try to unravel the Evgeny Nikitin mystery.
Cher Public