Life of the Mardi
La Monnaie’s flamboyantly busy new production of Benvenuto Cellini reads more burlesque than Berlioz.
Alain Altinoglu
12 pieces since 2013 — at 6 companies, most often at La Monnaie.
12
pieces
6
companies
14
years
Car Park Casta Diva
Fine music-making meets a clunker of a production in La Monnaie‘s revival of Norma
Get in the zone
Tamara Wilson and Stanislas de Barbeyrac are the standouts in Calixto Bieito’s underwhelming Die Walküre in Paris
I’m still thinking about Laurent Pelly’s The Golden Cockerel
In a lifetime of opera going I suppose I have seen many transformative productions, but this recent one seems, in the light of the increasing disaster enfolding this country, uncannily pertinent.
By Belfagor
Comment
Vigorous to rigorous
Dmitry Matvienko led a performance of Mussorgsky and Shostakovich at La Monnaie with meticulous rectitude.
Beyond redemption
This performance of Mahler’s Symphony N°8 at the Bozar in Brussels will probably be my last ever Mahler concert.
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.
Back to the beach
Now it’s time to grab Albert Einstein for a lengthy swim.
Moor than a feeling
While Bernard Herrmann is remembered primarily for the seven films on which he collaborated with Hitchcock, he also composed one opera: Wuthering Heights, written between 1943 and 1951.
Fresh princes
Imagine two tenors releasing French opera aria collections at the same time without duplicating a single track!
Winter wonder man
Life is not fair. There are rules that apply to Jonas Kaufmann, and rules that apply to everyone else.
Revolutionary étude
Thérèse is a compact work consisting of two short acts and clocks in just under seventy minutes.
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).