An instrument of your peace An instrument of your peace

Philippe Sly is sublime as Messiaen’s Saint François D’Assise in Salzburg, though Romeo Castellucci‘s production could brush up on its catechism.

By August 15, 2026 at 9:00 AM
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Let’s do the time warp again Let’s do the time warp again

Tobias Kratzer‘s time-traveling Arabella from the Deutsche Oper Berlin, now available on DVD, turns the opera’s problems into its strengths.

By November 07, 2025 at 9:00 AM
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Chanson d’amour Chanson d’amour

Soprano Erin Wall died in early October, a month shy of her 45th birthday; Trove Thursday remembers her with a 2012 broadcast of Kaija Saariaho’s shimmering L’Amour de Loin.

By December 03, 2020 at 10:00 AM
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The Riel thing The Riel thing

By virtue of its subject matter and the auspicious occasion of its commissioning, Louis Riel was destined to be iconic.

By May 05, 2017 at 9:46 AM
4 comments
If I only had a harp If I only had a harp

Capriccio skates along on a fine line between a fascinating idea-driven debate about the purpose of art in the wider world and a rather fussy narrow debate about text and music interesting only to those interested in opera as theatre.

By December 15, 2011 at 11:24 AM
85 comments
Experiment in error

It is, as Noel Coward remarked, astonishing how potent cheap music is. According to Brockway and Weinstock’s World of Opera, Gounod’s Faust was performed, after a rather lackluster debut in 1859, a thousand times inParis at the Opera between 1869 and 1894—a gobsmacking average of once every nine days. 

By December 13, 2011 at 11:02 AM
87 comments