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Jonas Kaufmann recounts Manon Lescaut

At the age of 44, the great German tenor, today considered the greatest of his generation, has chosen to add a new role to his repertoire, that of Des Grieux in Puccini’s Manon Lescaut. After Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca and Dick Jonhson in La Fanciulla del West, this is only his third Puccini role, even though his baritone-tinged tenor voice seems ideally made for this repertoire. Why did he wait so long? Perhaps just because he was never offered it. Or because he felt that, before...


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Anna Netrebko renounces her debut in Faust at Covent Garden

That's on Facebook that Anna Netrebko just announced her withdrawal from Covent's Garden production of  Faust : « I am so sorry to have to withdraw from the role of Marguerite in Faust. After much consideration and intensive preparation, I have come to the conclusion that the role is not right for me. I had been very much looking forward to debuting this role at the Royal Opera House and following it with further performances in Vienna and Baden-Baden....


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Jonas Kaufmann recounts Werther

Often considered the most personal and sensitive of Massenet’s works, Werther – whose libretto is freely inspired by The Sufferings of the Young Werther, Goethe’s epistolary novel – stands as one of the landmarks of 19th century French Romanticism. A melancholy work imbued with a resolutely tragic aspect sometimes bordering on the morbid.  In both Massenet’s work and Goethe’s novel, the young poet Werther is madly in love with Charlotte – who...


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La Traviata opens the new season at La Scala

The new production of Verdi’s La Traviata (which Stéphane Lissner had announced as a premiere) will be the main event for the end of this Verdi Year. There are several reasons for that. First, it is certainly one of Verdi’s most popular works, and perhaps in all of opera. Because of its libretto, of course, as melodramatic as one could wish. Also for its music, at once simple and effective, admirably constructed in its effects, theatrical in the finest sense of the...


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The Salzburg Festival 2014 outlines its program

Each year the Salzburg Festival stands out as one of the highlights of the opera season, and Cecilia Bartolli (who has served as the event’s artistic director since 2012) will be presenting the details of the 2014 programme over the next few weeks. The Salzburg Festival's first notes, however, are already being sounded on the event's official website, outlining the coming edition’s schedule.  And, as usual, it’s an enticing programme featuring some...