In 2018, a little-known Danish tech startup called Truelinked bought the website Operabase, at the time the largest database of classical music and opera performances, theaters, festivals and artists. It served as a kind of IMDb for opera, with performance listings, casting tools, and a deep archive of past events, and was used widely by […]
Tag: Opera
Posted inReview
Götterdämmerung Without Flames
In the late 19th century, talking about attention was all the rage. And of all that century’s artists and thinkers, Richard Wagner had perhaps the most wildly oscillating views on the fraught relationship between the production and consumption of works of art. At times, these views were a holdover from his revolutionary days: He held […]
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“Disney, of course, would do it better”
The morning before “Siegfried,” the “curator” of the Bayreuth “Ring,” Marcus Lobbes, gave an interesting question and answer session with Griffin Kaiser, a filmmaker and a member of the Wagner Society of New York. Before I report on what Lobbes said, I must make the point that if a work of art needs discursive intervention […]
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A Day of Genuine Dread
Unlike, apparently, the Wagner family and the minds behind the Bayreuth Festival, I actually like and respect the “Ring” cycle as both a work of art and a way of looking at the world. It feels insane to me that the cycle needs to be defended on its own merit, being one of the most […]
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Enfeebled Expression
AI is everywhere in Bayreuth. When I go to the coffee shop on Sophienstraße, there are AI portraits of Richard Wagner wearing bad emo eyeliner on the walls. On my way to the Festspielhaus, there are AI posters for what can only be described as a “dinosaur rodeo.” AI-generated signs litter the streets—for breakfast, for […]
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Tristan and Isolde and the Politicians
About a month ago, opera lovers in São Paulo were in dismay. Rumor had it that the upcoming production of “Tristan und Isolde” at the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo was canceled. When that was confirmed by a post from the director Felipe Hirsch, a frequent collaborator of the opera house, my phone melted with […]
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Heavy Shadows
This summer’s Aix-en-Provence Festival began with two journeys from darkness toward light. The first, under the stars at the Théâtre de l’Archevêché, showed Mozart’s Tamino as a little blond boy growing up amid the ruins of civilization. The second, at the indoor Grand Théâtre de Provence, began in near-total darkness, with Richard Strauss’s Amme rocking […]
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Posing The Question of Palestine at Crisco Disco
A librettist-turned-priest, a dramatic soprano, and the creative director of Christian Dior walk into a bar called Crisco Disco. It’s a late April evening in Florence, and the room smells of high-end fragrances, mildew, and poppers. A bear in a SnapBack is spinning tech house. Dancers dance. The walls are covered with guides to the […]
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The Vicissitudes of Concept
Her voice precedes her; this, at least, is no surprise. It is among opera’s oldest tricks, for an onstage character to “overhear” the future object of their desire in advance of both their own and the audience’s sight; falling in love on voice alone is, after all, the very premise of the genre. In “Salome,” […]
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Inside the UK’s Amateur University Opera Societies
The supporting pillars, ornate in red and gold, glimmer dully in the dark. Icons of the Church Fathers line the walls. An elaborate altar, framed by stained-glass windows, is upstaged metaphorically and downstaged literally by a gaudy Christmas tree, every decoration glittering in the light from a small rig. Several young people stand at the […]