On Sunday, a new opera by Beat Furrer, “Das grosse Feuer” (“The Great Fire”), premiered at the Zurich Opera House. Directed by Tatjana Gürbaca and based on a novel by the Argentine author Sara Gallardo, the work, also conducted by Furrer, tells the story of an Indigenous shaman named Eisejuaz, whose community and individual being are destroyed by the forces of outside religion and capitalism. 

In this new format, called BarTálk , we invite contributors to review a performance in the style of the post-gig, bar-hang conversation. This review features VAN contributor Ty Bouque and editor Jeffrey Arlo Brown. 

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… writes about opera: its slippery histories, its sensual bodies, and the work of mourning for a dead genre. Elsewhere, Bouque sings in various solo, ensemble, and opera configurations around the world....

… has been an editor at VAN since 2015. He’s the author of The Life and Music of Gérard Grisey: Delirium and Form (Boydell & Brewer), and his journalism has appeared in The Baffler, the New York...