The Bayerische Staatsoper’s Ring cycle scores another triumph with Tobias Kratzer’s take on Die Walküre.
Brett Dean‘s Of One Blood casts a well-trodden Tudor tale in a poignant, new light.
Tamara Wilson and Stanislas de Barbeyrac are the standouts in Calixto Bieito’s underwhelming Die Walküre in Paris
As a burgeoning opera fan, I relied on YouTube to connect me with the art form.
The opera proved somewhat puzzling—the score representing more a collage of fragmented and incidental musical ideas, and the libretto a turgid, slow-moving mass of purple prose.
Opera Vlaanderen opened its 2017-18 season with a rare staging of Korngold’s Das Wunder der Heliane.
I was puzzled by my initial exposure to the Medea of Aribert Reimann, a work of 2010.
It took about 30 minutes for me to grow restless watching the world premiere video of Gyorgi Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre from Gran Teatre del Liceu.
Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades straddles two genres. With a macabre plot that explores the boundaries of human obsession, it’s an early psychological thriller that makes the audience engage in a kind of voyeurism Alfred Hitchcock loved. Yet the plot drawn from Pushkin and the striking Romantic score with its references to Mozart, Bizet and Grétry firmly…
In 2006, Aribert Reimann was offered a commission to create a new work for Vienna State Opera. After initial hesitation—”The creative process can sometimes be rather a struggle and isn’t necessarily a pleasant experience”—he went to work. After a flirtation with a Camus drama, he settled on Franz Grillparzer’s version of Medea as his subject…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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