Festival d’Aix-en-Provence confronts the living and the dead — and its own future — through audacious productions and an intimate world premiere.
Ahead of his new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, Barrie Kosky chats with Kevin Ng in Aix about pretty much everything — except the details of his new Frau.
The Bayerische Staatsoper’s Ring cycle scores another triumph with Tobias Kratzer’s take on Die Walküre.
Supported by an ingenious production and strong performances, Antonia Bembo’s Ercole Amante makes a successful Paris Opera debut.
A.J. Goldmann on the Salzburg Festival’s revolving doors, both in its administration and in its delectable production of Il viaggio a Reims.
Barrie Kosky’s zany production of The Nose time-steps back onto the Komische Oper Berlin stage.
Akhnaten has lost none of its power or glitz at the Los Angeles Opera.
Samantha Hankey’s Composer is the standout in the Wiener Staatsoper’s episodically sublime Ariadne auf Naxos revival.
A stark, sweltering performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk shocks the Komische Oper Berlin.
“When there’s so much to get right, unsurprisingly a lot can and, as we all know, does go wrong.”
A patchy production and musical performance can’t dull the edge of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Komische Oper Berlin
As Messiah season begins, Christopher Corwin reports on two of Handel’s forays into the Old Testament.
James Gaffigan, the incoming Music Director of Houston Grand Opera, strikes a balance between New World precision and Old World flair in repertoire, staging, and wine
Barrie Kosky’s incredible production widened and universalized the ending.
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.
Der Rosenkavalier is a three-hour meditation on nostalgia. What could be better to bathe in?
Nowhere are the contradictions between Wagner’s small-mindedness, his meanness of spirit, and his human insight on clearer display than in Hans Sachs monologue Wahn, Wahn überall Wahn in the third Act of Mesitersinger.
This summer’s festival, taking place amid record high temperatures and in the wake of its artistic director, Pierre Audi, featured a disquietingly zeigeisty focus on sexual violence.
Matthias Davids‘s reactionary new production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg might be fun, but no one comes to Bayreuth for fun.
Jacquelyn Stucker talks to Kevin Ng about repertoire, tearing down the Fach system, and what it takes to make music from baroque to George Benjamin her own.
Les Brigands at the Paris Opera is an expensive joke that never lands
parterre box serves up an amuse-bouche of Natalie Dessay as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd in Strasbourg!
Ahead of her return to the Met, soprano Corinne Winters chats with Kevin Ng about her repertoire, overcoming biases about her voice type, and how she plans to play “energetic, young women” as long as she can.
BAM is back!
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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