Haircut and paste
Back to Rameau again this week with Samson at the Opéra Comique, my third Rameau production in as little as three months, after Les Fêtes d’Hébé in the same house, and Castor et Pollux at the Palais Garnier.
Voltaire
13 pieces since 2012.
13
pieces
15
years
Playing midwives to an egg
Nigel Wilkinson reports on Teodor Curentzis and Peter Sellars‘s new production of Rameau‘s Castor et Pollux in Paris.
Quand sur la plage
What can you say, other than that everything was fab?
For the first time
On this day in 1967 Herbert von Karajan bowed at the Metropolitan Opera in a new production of Die Walküre which he directed and conducted.
A whole new world
The Paris Opera assembled an all-French cast to stage arguably the most well-known example of opéra-ballet, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes.
Panglossed over
Celebrating Lenny’s 100th this year has made Candide ubiquitous at opera houses worldwide.
Death becomes him
Tancredi, given on February 10th, was a credit to Opera Philadelphia, who offered a well-considered and compelling production.
Musical theater of the absurd
It’s easy to see why Leonard Bernstein’s Candide was a flop when it premiered on Broadway.
Venice to society
I was, to my astonishment, quite bored.
Oh ciel! Che intendo!
Heaven temporarily relocated to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées Sunday evening for a concert performance of Rossini’s revered but rarely heard Semiramide.
You were revived, you know
The merits of Candide—Leonard Bernstein‘s musically glimmering yet dramatically awkward comic operetta based on Voltaire’s novella – are on ravishing display at the Menier Chocolate Factory.
The new world
Name a Verdi opera, based on a play by Voltaire, described in the immortal words of the composer as “Questo e proprio brutto.”
The Prussians are coming
Sometime in 1753, Frederick The Great of Prussia, following a tiff with his great friend Voltaire, began writing an opera libretto in French prose that was to elucidate his ideas about the role of an enlightened monarch.