Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” is a work of relentless cynicism, where three runaway convicts build a Sin City that peaks then crashes. The opera also charts the gradual souring of a philosophy through liberal ideals, to the libertarian pursuit of freedom at all cost, to an […]
Tag: Opera
Posted inReview
The Days of Change
There is always something cathartic in Richard Strauss’s “Salome.” Perhaps it’s the portrayal of a woman’s wrath which is not entirely unjustified, given the seething remarks of her ill-fated love interest, in turn not so far off from how men talk to women on the site formerly known as Twitter these days. Perhaps it’s the ultimate comeuppance […]
Posted inI Know, But
I Know, But: Andrea Bocelli
Even by internet standards, opera fans have a gift for hyperbole. A soprano isn’t “good”; she “is the divine prima donna assoluta” or “shines eternal light into descending trills, chromatic scales, and laser Cs.” She doesn’t “miss a note”; she is “a HORROR SHOW!!! The WOBBLE is out of control.” But when American soprano Jennifer […]
Posted inReview
On the Shore of the Cosmos
Conductor Maxime Pascal delights in the vast, the weird, and the borderline unachievable. At the Salzburg Festival this year, he offered a program featuring two of Pierre Boulez’s most forbidding works—”Sur Incises” and “…explosante-fixe…”—each lasting around 40 minutes and featuring ensemble writing of dazzling complexity. Just programming one is a feat; Pascal did both, with […]
Posted inReview
The Nobility and Carelessness of Humans
Così fan tutte” is a peculiar opera. The last of the Mozart-Da Ponte trilogy, it was the least performed in the creators’ lifetimes, then largely disappeared for most of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century. Successful performances after World War II at Glyndebourne brought new interest in the work, and its […]
Posted inEssay
Two Siegmunds, Two Wälses
After writing 9,000 words on the “Ring” cycle, I thought that maybe I’d finally be done thinking about it. For a while, I was. Then, after what would be a two-month break in my obsession, I decided to return to something I wanted to write about at the time but never got to. During the […]
Posted inBarTálk
Fluid and Amorphous
A new autumn brings with it a new season from Vache Baroque, les nouveaux enfants terribles of Baroque opera. This year’s offering is André Campra’s 1699 opera-ballet “Le Carnaval de Venise,” which received its UK premiere 326 years overdue. Directed by James Hurley and conducted from the harpsichord by Vache’s cofounder Jonathan Darbourne, this production, […]
Posted inOpinion
Machine in the Gods
When Richard Wagner’s Festspielhaus opened in Bayreuth in 1876, it boasted the latest in theater technology. From its covered orchestra pit to its state-of-the-art lighting and stage machinery, the theater’s technical innovations were meant to mirror the composer’s experimentations with harmony, structure, and form. The Bayreuth Festival was inaugurated with the first complete performance of […]
Posted inI Know, But
I Know, But: “Appalachian Spring”
With Trump’s tanks rolling down Pennsylvania Avenue and combat-fatigued foot soldiers guarding masked ICE agents in Los Angeles, who’s listening to “Appalachian Spring”? How does Aaron Copland’s World War II-era patriotic evocation of the American pastoral strike our ears in an era of xenophobic, gun-toting vigilantism, when small towns are propagandized as the last stand […]
Posted inInterview
The Architecture of Bodies
Ted Huffman is one of the most successful American opera directors at work in Europe. His vivid stagings of classic and contemporary works are characterized by a sensitive engagement with music and text, as well as precise and detailed work with his singers. Perhaps surprisingly for a young and in-demand director, he does not have […]