Vigorous to rigorous
Dmitry Matvienko led a performance of Mussorgsky and Shostakovich at La Monnaie with meticulous rectitude.
Nigel Wilkinson
Nigel has attended opera regularly, in Paris and elsewhere, for over 40 years. His focus is more on live, staged opera, warts and all, than recordings. His reports, which started as an aide-mémoire but were soon shared with friends and eventually became a blog, aim to encapsulate the unique experience, warts and all, of an ordinary, paying opera-goer. His other interests include travel, food and friendships, and he collects art by (mostly) young artists from around the world. UK-born and a graduate of Trinity College Cambridge, he has lived and worked in Iran and Turkey, but settled in Paris and, Brexit oblige, is now French.
There’s a parade in town
Les Brigands at the Paris Opera is an expensive joke that never lands
Drama therapy
Carmen in Brussels is dramatically vibrant, if vocally stretched
Those in glass houses
Krzysztof Warlikowski‘s Der Rosenkavalier at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées surpasses even Nigel Wilkinson‘s high ‘WTF threshhold’
Georges has Georges
A double bill of rare Bizet works in Paris is not something any of us needs to do more than once
Three ages of woman
Asmik Grigorian’s scorching turn in Il trittico in Paris has Nigel Wilkinson wondering, ‘what is it that makes Americans so weepy?’
Fractured féerie tales
Félix Fourdrain‘s “féerie” Les Contes de Perrault by the Frivolités Parisiennes is as fun for adults as it is for children
C’est une vraie voix
Don Carlos returns to the Opéra National de Paris and it’s an unusually happy occasion
Selvaggia e aspra e forte
Pascal Dusapin‘s dynamic and demanding traversal of Dante‘s Commedia arrives at the Paris Opera
Haircut and paste
Back to Rameau again this week with Samson at the Opéra Comique, my third Rameau production in as little as three months, after Les Fêtes d’Hébé in the same house, and Castor et Pollux at the Palais Garnier.
Beyond redemption
This performance of Mahler’s Symphony N°8 at the Bozar in Brussels will probably be my last ever Mahler concert.
My Lott in life
Some of my blog‘s habitués (they do exist) will know that I sometimes quote the people around me at the opera.
The twilight zone
As I mentioned in my last article (on the subject of Calixto Bieito’s production of Das Rheingold at the Paris Opera), in what the French might call une histoire belge, La Monnaie’s Ring cycle started with Romeo Castellucci as its director, and is now ending with Pierre Audi.
God grief
Nigel Wilkinson takes on the first installment of the Paris Opera’s new Calixto Bieito-directed Ring Cycle
Sung and spoken tragedy
The return of Cherubini‘s Medée to the Opéra Comique may be a homecoming, but Nigel Wilkinson almost went home at intermission.
Playing midwives to an egg
Nigel Wilkinson reports on Teodor Curentzis and Peter Sellars‘s new production of Rameau‘s Castor et Pollux in Paris.
Roadkill, twice over
Though I’ve sometimes complained that the Paris Opera, while supposedly short of cash, changes its productions nearly as often as the rest of us change our socks, André Engel’s Cunning Little Vixen first appeared there 17 years ago. At the time it was billed as ‘new’, though it actually dates back further still, to 2000 at the Lyon Opera. I saw it when it arrived at the Bastille and wrote it up at the time.
Quand sur la plage
What can you say, other than that everything was fab?
Seek to set him right
It was, at least, a jolly good show. Whether or not it actually suited Stravinsky’s music or Auden and Kallman’s text, is another question.
The best way to spread Christmas cheer
Back to Brussels last Sunday for my third new opera of the season (after The Time of our Singing, also at La Monnaie, and Picture a day like this, at the Opéra Comique): Mikael Karlsson’s Fanny and Alexander, with a libretto by Royce Vavrek.
Rise and look around you
My first opera of the new season in Paris, after kicking off in Brussels with Kris Defoort’s thought-provoking The Day of our Singing, was another nearly-new work, totally new to me: Sir George Benjamin’s Picture a day like this.
Neither fish nor fowl
Nigel Wilkinson reviews Kris Defoort‘s kaleidoscopic, unsettling new opera in Brussels.
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
