Aix tremendae, salva me
Festival d’Aix-en-Provence confronts the living and the dead — and its own future — through audacious productions and an intimate world premiere.
Ted Huffman
10 pieces since 2010 — at 2 companies, most often at La Monnaie.
10
pieces
2
companies
17
years
By company
Scenes from a revolution
“This isn’t an opera that touches on queer themes; it’s a bundle of queer themes tied up in an opera.”
So brutal but also so joyful
Composer Philip Venables talks about queer utopias and bending gender and genre in The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions which opens at the Park Avenue Armory this week.
The Aix factor
This summer’s festival, taking place amid record high temperatures and in the wake of its artistic director, Pierre Audi, featured a disquietingly zeigeisty focus on sexual violence.
Neither fish nor fowl
Nigel Wilkinson reviews Kris Defoort‘s kaleidoscopic, unsettling new opera in Brussels.
The men who rule Ramrod
It’s been eight decades since darling Aix-en-Provence was under attack—its last formal invasion, at least by non-operagoers, was in 1942 during the German occupation of southern France. But on Friday, the town was besieged once again by its annual festival, with two dazzling premieres that examined the cruel and constructive dimensions of war and revolution.
The Philadelphia stories
As we also saw last year, Festival O19 ended on a sweetly quiet note, movingly connecting Opera Philadelphia with the larger city and our musical future.
Total ellipse
Employing the most slimly elegant resources, Festival O’s Denis & Katya is a monumental, dramatically shattering event.
Borderlines
While 4.48 Psychosis is an intricately-crafted, deeply moving portrait of human agony, Pancho Villa from a Safe Distance lacks the creative clout to realize its artistic ambitions.
Truth is stranger
The wealthy suburban community of Greenwich, CT is a place where diamonds are in no short supply. Yet there are still some diamonds of artistic excellence hidden in this seaside town, including the shockingly well-done production of Hans Werner Henze’s The Runaway Slave (El Cimarrón) by the Greenwich Music Festival. This most likely will be […]
Win a Free Ticket to Opening Night at the Met!
Quinn Kelsey and Lise Davidsen star in the Met's new Macbeth. We're giving away one ticket, so screw your courage to the sticking place and enter now!
I’ll take the fall
The days are getting shorter, but you can keep the prattle going this fall’s Talk of the Town! You will, you can, you must join in the discussion about: Great mezzo soprano performances (October),
Gained in translation (November), Teleport me back to… (December).
