Category: Music
-
At Salzburg, Don Giovanni Gets No Pleasure From Seducing (New York Times)
A dark, enigmatic staging of Mozart’s opera brings together the director Romeo Castellucci and the conductor Teodor Currentzis.
-
Full-Scale Wagner Returns to Europe With a Refugee-Theme ‘Walküre’ (New York Times)
Delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, Stefan Herheim’s “Ring” cycle, rumored for a future Met Opera season, gets underway in Berlin.
-
The Drama Will Be Enhanced by Testing (New York Times)
A report from the Salzburg festival, where a coordinated display of will, political connections, and deep pockets is attempting to make grand opera happen in the middle of a pandemic.
-
A Female Composer Makes History With ‘Orlando’ in Vienna (New York Times)
Olga Neuwirth’s new adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s gender-crossing novel is the first work by a woman at the Vienna State Opera.
-
-
New Magic for a Classic Opera in Berlin (New York Times)
I profiled Yuval Sharon’s new production of The Magic Flute at the Berlin State Opera.
-
Bursting Through Confines (VAN)
I saw, and reviewed, five operas at the Aix Festival in July. An excerpt: The first thing I saw was groups of soldiers. Aix-en-Provence, a wealthy tourist resort and college town, is not their primary target, and France is only the latest in a long series of countries to be occupied by the French military.…
-
Walls Stay Down (VAN)
A review of Simon Rattle’s last concert as Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic.
-
Shush Money (VAN)
On James Levine’s lawsuit against the Met and that opera house as a symbol of the rot at the heart of the oligarch-driven and star-obsessed mainstream of classical music culture.
-
Awful Magic: On Franz Schreker’s “Die Gezeichneten” (VAN)
A review of Calixto Bieito’s disturbing production of an expressionist psychothriller of an opera.