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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...


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Verona Arena 2021: Sonya Yoncheva will sing Aida for the first time

Although there are still doubts about the exact course of the 2020 edition of the Verona Arena Festival (which could be based on small-scale productions for a reduced audience), the 2021 edition of the lyrical event is already the subject of special attention. In 2021, the 150th anniversary of the creation of Aida (first performed in 1871) will be commemorated, and the work obviously occupies a very special place in the Veronese programme -- the first edition of the festival in 1913 opened...


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A Rigoletto in the open air from July onwards to relaunch the Rome Opera House

Italy was particularly hard hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, but after several weeks of lockdown, local authorities are now considering a resumption of business, including cultural activities, and the Rome Opera House could be the first opera house to raise the curtain again. While there is no question of hosting the public in the auditorium (gatherings of more than 200 people in enclosed spaces are still forbidden in Italy and could remain so until the autumn), according to Corriere della...


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A "rejuvenated" 2020-2021 season at the Vienna State Opera

After ten years at the head of the Wiener Staatsoper, Dominique Meyer has this year taken over the direction of La Scala in Milan. He leaves his position to Bogdan Roscic, 52, whose name we recognise for having been the president of the Sony Classical label, specifically recruited by the Austrian government to "breathe new life into the Viennese institution". The new musical director will be Philippe Jordan, who arrives after years in the service of the Paris Opera, and who will...


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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...


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The Paris Opera presents its 2018-2019 anniversary season, at the meeting point between tradition and modernity

As a national opera, the Paris Opera has historically taken on the role of preserving France's operatic heritage and bringing French opera to life. For all that, opera is obviously a distinctly living art form and since the beginning of his mandate at the head of the Parisian establishment, Stéphane Lissner has also been committed to contributing to updating the repertoire and has been working to diversify the cultural range of France's famous Opera. This is the reason for...


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Preview: Royal Opera 2017/18 Season

Although Kasper Holten left the post of Artistic Director of the Royal Opera in March 2017, he played the leading role in programming its 2017/18 season and, with a good blend of new productions and strong revivals, it looks to be a particularly fine one. Some composers whose operas have been neglected in recent seasons get a look-in, while several contemporary composers also have the opportunity to present new works. Add in the fact that many evenings feature some of the world’s...


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Director’s vision with Stéphane Lissner : Bringing great voices to the stage

For Stéphane Lissner, director of the Opéra National de Paris, the secret to programming a successful season could be summed up in three words: diversity, quality and relevance. That approach means matching the great voices of our time — singers like Jonas Kaufmann and Bryn Terfel, Anja Harteros and Anna Netrebko, and theater directors like Claus Guth and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker — with the composers of the past, some celebrated and others less acknowledged,...


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Yannick Nézet-Séguin replaces James Levine as the new musical director of the Metropolitan Opera

As we mentioned recently, James Levine has been forced to resign from his post as artistic director of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, which he’d held since 1975, for reasons of health. And so for the first time in forty years, the Metropolitan will welcome a new musical  director, only the third (officially) since the New York institution was established 135 years ago. And after several weeks of rumours, it was announced this afternoon that 41-year-old...


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Metropolitan Opera : The 2016/17 season

Although the Metropolitan Opera clearly remains a prestigious opera house with one of the great lyric stages, it is well known that the New York institution has in recent years had to make do with a very limited budget – marked by a 22 million dollar deficit in 2014 and just barely in the black by a million dollars for 2015 thanks to the sale of some of its assets, and particularly through drastic cost-cutting measures that are ongoing. For the first time since its 2009-2010 season,...


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Paris Opera, Lissner Season 2: the 2016/2017 Season

At the Opéra de Paris, Stéphane Lissner, like any new director making his ambitions known, was met by sceptics and naysayers lying in wait for him, along with all those who wished him less than well: the success of his first performances quickly swept away all the reservations and banana peels strewn in his path. His success was obvious, hailed by national and international critics and corroborated by the enthusiasm of the audiences filling the halls.This success is of course...