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Bayreuth Festival 2026: seven operas instead of eleven for the 150th anniversary
For its 150th anniversary in 2026, the Bayreuth Festival had planned to present eleven operas by Wagner. However, due to budget constraints, the festival has scaled back its ambitions and will finally settle for seven of the composer's works, including a new tetralogy. In 2026, the Bayreuth Festival will celebrate its 150th anniversary. To mark the occasion, Katharina Wagner has promised a programme that will include all ten of Richard Wagner's major operas (from The Flying...
Published onthe 07 of December
Hymn to Apollo performed by Benjamin Bernheim at the Closing Ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games
As part of the closing ceremony of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, Franco-Swiss tenor Benjamin Bernheim performed a modernised version of L'Hymne à Apollon. This ancient Greek song was discovered in Delphi in 1893 and is one of the few surviving examples of ancient Greek music. For the last two weeks, Paris has been living to the rhythm of the 2024 Olympic Games. This sporting and festive chapter came to an end last night at the end of a Closing Ceremony that included several...
Published onthe 12 of August
Contemporary opera: A conversation with Vasco Mendonça
Vasco Mendonça is one of the rising stars among contemporary composers. In addition to his studies with Klaas de Vries and George Benjamin, he has participated in the Rolex Mentor and Protegé Arts Initiative along with Kaija Saariaho and represented Portugal at UNESCO’s International Rostrum of Composers. His first piece of musical theatre, Ping, was adapted from a Samuel Beckett monologue and premiered in 2011. The House Taken Over (2013) – based on...
Published onthe 30 of January
Mozart in Salzburg - the changing faces of the local boy
As the Salzburg Festival approaches its centenary next August, how can we not mention Mozart in the history of the event? The composer is obviously inseparable from the Austrian city, but the performance of the local boy's works have varied during the hundred years of the Festival's existence, sometimes presenting his great classics, sometimes rediscovering some of his lesser known works, or to remind us that even today, "Mozart has a lot to tell...
Published onthe 01 of July
The Salzburg Festival, one hundred years of artistic ideals
As a result of the health measures in place in Austria to combat the coronavirus pandemic, the 2020 Salzburg Festival is being "downsized and redesigned". In 2020, the Festival nevertheless celebrates its centenary with a programme that begins this year and continues next year. Through a series of articles that we are starting today, we look back on the major challenges of the Festival, whether ideological and political, artistic or musical - whether through the great performers...
Published onthe 17 of June
Fidelio, a Unique Opera
In 2020, Beethoven's 250th birthday is commemorated and many opera houses take the opportunity to perform his unique opera, Fidelio. Although it was painstakingly composed, the work is today one of the references in the repertoire and shows an incredible modernity – musically, by laying the foundations for Romanticism, but also for its already "feminist" libretto. Starting on 1 March, the Royal Opera House - Covent Garden in London performs a highly anticipated new...
Published onthe 28 of February
A conversation with Rani Calderon about his first composition: opera as a cathedral
Rani Calderon is known to us from his work as music director of the Opéra national de Lorraine as well as for his interpretations as a conductor, which we have often reviewed and praised. Few know however that today he is dedicating his time to a new activity: composition. While the prelude of his opera, based on Victor Hugo’s novel “Notre Dame de Paris” (“The Hunchback of Notre Dame”), which he builds in the manner of the gothic cathedrals, was...
Published onthe 27 of August
5 Questions to Jonas Söderman Bohlin
Jonas Söderman Bohlin composed the music and co-wrote the libretto of Tristessa, a brand new opera premiered at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm last week. The work is based on The Passion of New Eve, a book written by Angela Carter in the late 70s. It tells the story of Evelyn, an aggressive man who will become a woman against his will through the action of a feminist cult. He worships Tristessa, a Golden Age movie star that will eventually share his destiny. We discussed...
Published onthe 11 of October
Bellini, a Meteor in the Romantic Firmament
After Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland, Monserrat Caballé or recently Cecilia Bartoli, Sonya Yoncheva will be Norma for the first time, in the new production of the Royal Opera House in London, conducted by Antonio Pappano and set by Àlex Ollé (in a new setting which seems to be of a very catholic inspiration, taking place in the transalpine Gaule occupied by the Romans of the original libretto. Yoncheva taking on the role is far...
Published onthe 09 of September
Faust: the tragic illusion of Marguerite
Breaking with the image of Goethe’s work (which the writer himself deemed impossible to adapt), Charles Gounod’s Faust is often perceived as a comic opera, a light entertainment fit only for arousing the enthusiasm of the broadest audience, especially with its popular arias (starting with “Je ris de me voir si belle en ce miroir”, popularised by Tintin’s Castafiore). Despite this, the work is far more dense than it seems, revealing Gounod’s conflicts...
Published onthe 10 of August
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Thomas Adès, pragmatic contemporary
In the 20th century, there was an opera mystique, the mystique of the impossible and often single work: Schönberg never managed to find a satisfying conclusion to Moses und Aaron, and Messiaen, at age 75 and after eight years of work, delivered an outrageous and fascinating Saint Francis. And then there are others, composers who have long, continuous and productive careers, like Britten or Henze. Thomas Adès, a 45-year-old English composer, is one of the latter. The work...
Published onthe 26 of July
Carmen: “Red Pepper, Scarlet Flower”
If Carmen is today the most played opera in the world, it wasn't as acclaimed when it was created (mostly because of the libretto considered as "scandalous"). Bizet's work is an ode to freedom which ends in tragedy and questions us about the meanings of passion and duty. And this year, the french festival Les Chorégies d'Oranges is giving a new production with Kate Aldrich singing the title role, besides Jonas...
Published onthe 06 of July