Often, music from childhood and youth doesn’t merely bring back memories of those times: it evokes real, physical sensations like adrenaline, sweat, and heartbreak. For this playlist, Barrie Kosky, the Artistic Director of the Komische Oper Berlin, mined his experiences as a gay kid growing up in Australia and the influence of his grandmother. His […]
Tag: Opera
Posted inInterview
Confinements
Round-number anniversaries of composers’ births and deaths can often feel arbitrary, excuses to keep programming the same music. Not Monteverdi’s 450th birth year. His operas are universal, important reminders that us humans have always had the same struggles, that we’ve been here before: 450 is a number that puts things in perspective. The conductor John […]
Posted inInterview
Amour
On December 1, the Metropolitan Opera in New York City will perform its first opera by a female composer since 1903. Kaija Saariaho’s 2000 opera “L’Amour de Loin” is a haunting tale of love transcending the bounds of distance and death, adapted from a medieval troubadour’s fictionalized life story. There are only three characters: Jaufre […]
Posted inInterview
Thousands of Changes
In February, Andris Nelsons told VAN about conducting Wagner in Bayreuth: “You enjoy it masochistically.” On June 30, he asked to be released from his contract, with the festival citing “a differing approach in various matters.” The performance artist and provocateur Jonathan Meese, the director for this year’s production of “Parsifal,” was let go. It’s […]
Posted inEssay
Mezzo-sopranos from Outer Space
In 2015, the writer Lisa Bolekaja published a short story in Uncanny, a magazine for science fiction and fantasy, called “Three Voices,” inspired by the Morton Feldman piece of the same name. At the climax, a vocalist’s skin pigmentation drains from her body and her eyes pop out. “How could she sing with no head?” […]
Posted inProfile
Just Like A Concert
Lukhanyo Moyake was the first singer I heard at the International Hans Gabor Belvedere Singing Competition last June, which for the first time in its 35-year history held rounds in Cape Town, South Africa. Still bleary-eyed from the day-long flight, I quickly regained my senses upon hearing the first phrase of his aria, “Ella mi […]
Posted inOpinion
Redundant Space
On June 19, I saw the English National Opera’s production of “Tristan und Isolde.” Besides the cast, the house advertised its collaboration with the British-Indian artist Anish Kappoor, who doubled as the production’s set designer. Employing a famous artist as a set designer is an appealing double whammy for opera houses, promising both creative constructions […]
Posted inProfile
Mythology Of Our Time
This Tuesday, I spoke with John Adams by phone from his studio, in Northern California. He will be the Artist in Residence at the Berlin Philharmonic next season, and I thought I’d give him some unsolicited advice about techno music here. Does he listen to it? “Sometimes.” Berlin also has a reputation as a paradise […]
Posted inReview
Surroundings
I honestly thought I knew all about the New York City opera scene. I tracked Opera On Tap. I had been to LoftOpera in Brooklyn. I spent years going to local opera competitions and all levels of the Met’s National Council Auditions. I was up to date on New York City Opera’s finances—hell, I was […]
Posted inReport
I Am Singing About Myself
Introduction On a late night this past spring, I saw a headline in The Independent that would soon provoke exasperation in parts of the opera world, outrage in others: “Otello: Why is a white tenor leading the Royal Opera House’s new production?” I was troubled, too: the headline I’d expected to see was, “ ‘I […]