Barrie Kosky’s zany production of The Nose time-steps back onto the Komische Oper Berlin stage.
It’s always surprised me how so many performances of the major Brecht/Weill collaborations seem to have zero clue of how to handle either Weill’s music.
Many productions have emphasized Salome’s youth, but few have gone as far as this spectacular and visceral production at the Komische Oper by Evgeny Titov.
James Gaffigan, the incoming Music Director of Houston Grand Opera, strikes a balance between New World precision and Old World flair in repertoire, staging, and wine
In a lifetime of opera going I suppose I have seen many transformative productions, but this recent one seems, in the light of the increasing disaster enfolding this country, uncannily pertinent.
BAM is back!
Simon McBurney’s Die Zauberflöte, the second new production of the Met’s May Mozart Miracle, opened on Friday to rousing near-unanimous cheers.
A quick survey of the Met website shows wide swaths of available seats for the upcoming performances of La traviata and L’elisir d’amore. Only new works like The Hours and Fire Shut Up in My Bones have been achieving sold-out houses.
Bard SummerScape’s concert staging of Die Tote Stadt emerged triumphant thanks to Clay Hilley and Sara Jakubiak.
Why did I mostly want to close my eyes and just listen?
Celebrating Lenny’s 100th this year has made Candide ubiquitous at opera houses worldwide.
I had my head in my hands groaning in disbelief instead of joining in the general applause around me.
As is happening increasingly in opera productions today (e.g., the Rosenkavalier in Stuttgart), the action of Moses und Aron at the Komische Oper begins some minutes before the music does.
The Deutsche Opera an Rhein production of Handel’s Xerxes (which is shared with the Berlin Komische Oper), though I saw it three nights ago, has taken a while to settle down in my brain.
Certain opera productions become the stuff of legend as much for the circumstances surrounding the performance as for the musical results.
Opera is about the possibility of transformation. An unassuming woman can walk in through the theater’s stage door and emerge on stage as fiery princess capable of making the walls rattle. Alas, these transformations inevitably fail to stick. Every Turandot must hang up her crown; every Elektra must put down her ax one final time.…
First night in Berlin, since the feared jet lag did not, in fact, do your doyenne in, was spent at the Komische Oper seeing Die Entführung aus dem Serail in the “notorious” Calixto Bieito production. La Cieca’s opinion?
Tell us: Filth or dementia?
Hasten thee to feed another quarter of conversation for The Talk of the Town!
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