It is quite unusual to stage a new indoor production in the middle of summer in Italy when so many outdoor venues are open, but general manager of La Scala Stéphane Lissner – who will leave next year – decided to close the first half of this Verdi-Wagner year with a beloved hit of il cigno di Busseto.
Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice marked an epic first, a turning point in the history of opera. In this, the first of the composer’s “reform” operas, his intention was to take the opera seria style popular at the time and to boil it down to its purest dramatic elements, creating an opera of “noble…
Over the years we have heard many different versions of Gluck’s Orphée. One can choose the Vienna version for castrato, which is shorter and simpler (or better: equally difficult, but in a less spectacular way), the Paris rewrite for tenor or the Berlioz reworking for the distinguished mezzo Pauline Viardot (Anne Sophie von Otter sang…
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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