Columns linked to Ambrogio Maestri

Adriana Lecouvreur at the Liceu: Less Sincere is the Truth

Xavier Pujol

Adriana Lecouvreur has returned to the Liceu, a title that is an authentic operone, with a great vocal score and an orchestration of high level and full of details; a very great drama, with four acts, ballet, three imposing characters and an intense dramatic conflict on a libretto with no special poetic relevance. A work with a very rare aesthetic situation given that, ascribed by the time of composition (it was premiered in 1902) to verismo, it is not about screams and stabbings...


The Good Trittico by Davidsen, Jaho and Maestri

Xavier Pujol

35 years after having last appeared at Liceu, Puccini's Trittico has returned to its stage. It has done so in a 2017 Munich Opera production directed by Lotte de Beer. Achieving a visual and dramatic union in a single production of three titles as different as those that make up Il Trittico is not at all easy, the Dutch stage director half succeeds at it. De Beer takes death as a thread: in the first opera, a passionate thriller, there is a murder; in the second, a melodrama, we...


Bayerische Staatsoper Umberto Giordano Andrea Chenier

Helmut Pitsch

A powerful revolution, a strong military touch, dry and frightful is the musical interpretation of Omar Meir Wellber, the young Israeli conductor of the last performance of the Munich festival. He pushes the Bavarian State Orchestra with wide desiring gestures. The musicians follow him with discipline and voluminous power. That does not make it easy for the stars of this repetition of the celebrated new production of Andrea Chenier of this season. Andrea Chenier The plot is full...


Falstaff at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Sam Smith

Verdi’s final opera Falstaff premiered in 1893 as the composer was approaching his eightieth birthday. With the exception of the ill-fated Un giorno di regno, it is the only comedy that he ever wrote, but its obvious hilarity should not detract from its musical and emotional intelligence. It almost requires more skill to write a piece that maintains a cracking pace throughout, and hence sees recitative and aria virtually merge into one, than it does to compose the most soulful,...


Cavalleria Rusticana / Pagliacci at the Salzburg Easter Festival

Helmut Pitsch

The Salzburg Easter Festival has developed its international reputation for exceptional opera performances and exquisite concerts. Since the seperation from the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra some years ago, the cooperation with the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden and its worldwide highly regarded conductor Christian Thielemann has been very fruitful. This year's festival presented the realisation of a new production of the famous Verismo twin package Cavalleria rusticana...