At the heart of Tobias Kratzer’s incisively rollicking production of Tannhäuser lies a metanarrative that maps Wagner’s early political and artistic challenges onto its hero’s philosophical struggles.
24 comments
“Robert Lepage‘s direction of a crucial scene in the Ring is even worse than Otto Schenk‘s, if such a thing is possible.”
By La Cieca
Stefan Herheim‘s intensely enjoyable “barocke Muppet-Show” take on Handel’s opera starts streaming at 1:00 PM today on OperaVision.
By La Cieca
How is it possible that no one has ever done a production of Hänsel und Gretel with the Witch played as Fanny Cradock?
By La Cieca
“Puccini’s operas seldom take well to abstraction, since the composer engraved every detail of what should happen into the score so specifically that there was little wiggle room left.”
By La Cieca
“Heinrich, come on over for dinner! / We’ll be so glad to see you!”
By La Cieca
Congratulations to dramatic coloratura soprano Klára Kolonits.
By La Cieca
>What does a great opera production do, and what does a bad production fail to do?
By Porgy Amor
The Hänsel und Gretel discussions over the holidays plunged me down a YouTube rabbit hole.
The production by Sebastian Baumgarten is the type of regietheater that’s not a rethinking or reconstruction, but just a hot mess.
By Poison Ivy
La Cieca (not pictured) surrenders, cher public: she can no longer bear the burden of opposing ignorant, hysterical pearl-clutching on the internet. The clutchers have won.
By La Cieca
“New York is great. Opera is great. They deserve each other. So what can we do to get them together? Who can show us how it’s done? We need to ask the Germans.”
By La Cieca
Fans of the “context-free laundry list” school of opera criticism will be happy to know that “the world’s preeminent philosopher in the field of aesthetics,” Roger Scruton, has now shouldered the white man’s burden of rescuing opera from interpretation.
By La Cieca
Some thoughts about the perishability of opera productions follow.
By La Cieca
Mariusz Trelinski will direct Tristan und Isolde for Metropolitan Opera in a production that will premiere there on opening night 2016.
By La Cieca
The role debut of a world-class singer is always a time of great anticipation, hopefully to be followed by celebration, if not unbridled jubilation.
By Patrick Mack
“Anna Netrebko (Leonora) is seen during the Il Trovatore photo rehearsal on August 4, 2014 in Salzburg, Austria.”
By La Cieca
It’s time to bring out the canard again, this time a whole row of them in fact.
By La Cieca
Our old friend Heather Mac Donald (not pictured) is back, ostensibly to mourn the loss of ‘Petrarchan intimacy with the past’ in the study of the humanities, but, reliably enough, she can’t help taking a swipe at Regietheater while she’s at it.
By La Cieca
How, then, to explain the perplexing performance last Friday night of Falstaff, Mr. Levine’s first new production since his return?
By La Cieca
So we may all be on the same page as we discuss, following the jump is the video of the December 7 Traviata from La Scala.
By La Cieca
The much-anticipated Stefan Herheim production of Les Vêpres Siciliennes opened last night at the Royal Opera, and the New York Times‘ Zachary Woolfe was something less than completely bowled over.
By La Cieca
The surprises, and puzzles, of Dmitri Tcherniakov‘s production of Don Giovanni in this DVD of a performance at the Aix-en-Provence festival begin before a note has been played or the curtain has risen.
By grimoaldo
