Born to command
Audacious star performances elevate safe direction in Richard II and The Seagull on London’s West End
Fiona Shaw
7 pieces since 2011 — at 1 company, most often at Metropolitan Opera.
7
pieces
1
company
16
years
By company
Turning over an old leaf
Is there any opera that can take more of a beating while still making an impact than Eugene Onegin?
Season of the Witch
Trove Thursday offers a pair of live broadcasts of Médée featuring two compelling mid-20th century divas—Inge Borkh in German and Eileen Farrell in Italian.
Same steppes, different dancers
Is there a more gorgeous male voice before the public today than Peter Mattei’s? Has Anna Netrebko ever sounded better?
No business like snow business
Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin is his masterwork and its themes of social convention and unrequited longing surely struck a deep chord in a composer who, in late 19th century Russia, was gay and had to conduct himself carefully.
Tonight or Neva
Last night, the Met opened the 2013-14 season with a handsome, fairly conservative new production of Eugene Onegin by Deborah Warner that replaces the handsome, fairly conservative one by Robert Carsen. (The trend is clear.)
Witch of the season
Noticing how often she turns up lately, one might guess that the operatic “heroine” for the global economic crunch is Medea, the mythological Greek sorceress and filicide.