Verdi’s I due Foscari is a definite contender for the title of “least dramatic opera”. Not much happens: the younger Foscari (Jacopo) is sent back into exile by the Venetian Council of Ten and dies on the way. His wife Lucrezia pleads and suffers, in vain. Led by the Foscaris’ enemy, Jacopo Loredano, the Council also votes to remove the older Foscari (Francesco) from his position as Doge. This double grief kills him. Despite his role as the antagonist, Loredano...

In 1898 Giuseppe Verdi described Vincenzo Bellini as being ‘rich in feeling and in an individual melancholy of his own’. The associated musical traits can be found in abundance in Norma of 1831, with academic David Kimbell suggesting that the composer’s most astonishing achievement in the opera was ‘amid all the more obvious excitements of musical Romanticism, to have asserted his belief that the true magic of opera depended on a kind of incantation in which...

The first premiere of the new season of the Bavarian State Opera is a historical premiere too. First time Arrigo Boito's opera Mefistofele on stage here. Arrigo Boito is one of the glamorous artists of Italy in the last 19th century. Educated in music, he was a literary, a librettist and a composer, but also a political and philosophical active person too. As a founding member of the avant-garde artist group "I Scapigliatura", the tousled - he represented the newly found...

Puccini's opera has always caused mixed feelings to the audience. Once it has been too much of a fairytale besides a real political and social theme, once it has been musically flat. Nevertheless this is a masterpiece of Italian verismo and musically demanding for all the participants, thus to explore once more at the Bavarian State Opera. Based on a very traditional long played direction of Wolf Busse, scene by Otto Stich - this repertoire spectacle was awaited for its cast. After...

This reprise of the well acclaimed production of Peter Stein and Stefan Mayer shows several role debutes on the stage of the Viennese State Opera. Joseph Calleja gives his warm with a full Italien timbre equipped tenor to Gabriele Adorno. Lacking lively emotional play on stage he conquers the audience with his voice next to Tamar Iveri as a colourless Amelia and Thomas Hampson dominating the evening in the title role. His Simon is honorful, dignified, caring showing affection for his...