Nature and music are so interconnected – from Bach, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky to name just three composers – that this Prom, From the Alps to the Auvergne, took three markedly different composers, of ...

Better melodies could secure new operas a lasting place on stage, the argument goes. Howard Hanson’s 1934 opera Merry Mount, a Metropolitan Opera commission, serves as evidence that a score’s ...

Composed originally for a Vienna premiere in 1864 the present version of Les FÈes du Rhin, or Die Rheinnixen, was published in the last few years as part of the critical edition of the complete works ...

But, to modern directors and company it presents a host of challenges: the extreme vocal virtuosity of the principal roles, its juxtaposition of genres and stylistic eclecticism, and, not least, its ...

As I wrote in my review of the production, ‘her terrible bereavement, at first quietly accepted, resurges with terrifying force when … she recognises the tiny red cap that she knitted for him. Never ...

present production — the one Jean-Pierre Ponnelle was doing all over the operatic world — was created for Marilyn Horne, not so terribly long ago.

Indeed, the ‘Fireside Pantomime’ indulges in fiancé-swapping and satirical scepticism about love and faithfulness which would not be out of place in Così fan tutte. So, we should not be surprised that ...

From the opening phrase declaimed on virtually a single pitch in Monteverdi’s “Io ch’armato sin hor” we are captured and simply have to hear what the next note will sound like, and the next, and the ...

Staged in conjunction with Joffrey Ballet Chicago, the production features both dance and singing. Since Oropesa sings with silver tones and moves as gracefully as a dancer, she is a natural for the ...

When, in the Prologue, the Dancing Master jokes that the commedia dell’arte troupe’s vaudeville would be better performed after the new opera that His Lordship has commissioned – because ...

Simonetta Cavalli (Arsilda); Lucia Sciannimanico (Lisea); Elena Cecchi Fedi (Mirinda); Nicky Kennedy (Barzane); Joseph Cornwell (Tamese); Sergio foresti (Cisardo); Alessandra Rossi (Nicandro). Modo ...

composer was devastated when the Paris OpÈra, the only theater in Paris then ...