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 Ralph Fiennes production of Eugene Onegin at the Paris Opera is just…fine.
Claus Guth mines urgent and contemporary commentary from Die Liebe der Danae in Munich.
Look, for one of the most-staged operas in the repertoire, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte seems awfully difficult to stage.
When it premiered at the Opéra Comique in 1875, Carmen shocked audiences with its frank depictions of female sexuality, the proletariat, and violence: subjects that have ensured the piece’s continued relevance and that have inspired numerous retellings and revisions.
“I come, I come! ye have called me long;
I come o’er the mountains, with light and song”
This Carmen, in other words, was somewhat less radical than its initial image suggested.
Leos Janacek’s 1904 opera Jenufa could be a rather grim affair.
Simon McBurney’s Die Zauberflöte, the second new production of the Met’s May Mozart Miracle, opened on Friday to rousing near-unanimous cheers.
Robert Carsen‘s legendary production of Eugene Onegin finally arrives in San Francisco.
Is there any opera that can take more of a beating while still making an impact than Eugene Onegin?
It may have taken 28 years to see Robert Carsen’s production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the U. S., but it was worth waiting for.
Alban Berg’s compact yet potent oeuvre has long played an outsized role in shaping my understanding of music’s aesthetic evolution.
There are shows with iconic characters, and there are shows with iconic characters playing iconic characters.
Ah, finalmente!
Among several fine productions at Aix this summer, Dmitri Tcherniakov’s brilliantly conceived and executed Carmen proved a game changer.
Lyric Opera of Chicago concluded its 2016-17 season with a spellbinding and wonderfully sung production of Tchaikovsky’s familiar Eugene Onegin.
The Canadian Opera Company scored a coup when they secured Christine Goerke for the revival of their Ring productions over the last three seasons
>What does a great opera production do, and what does a bad production fail to do?
First seen in 2005, Siegfried makes a welcome return as a stand-alone production this season.
The Canadian Robert Carsen would appear to love the theater to the point of fixation.
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.
I am grateful to Sony for this new release of the Metropolitan Opera’s latest production of Parsifal and I hope I’m not the only one who discovers what a rich experience this opera can be because of it.
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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