... With such assertiveness Don Giovanni addresses the final number of the first act. This certainly seems to be the spirit of the Don Giovanni currently being staged at Liceu. The world is crumbling around them, but Don Giovanni and Liceu are firmly staying put. To bring Don Giovanni to the stage “could almost be defined as an act of cultural resistance”, stated publically a few days ago Víctor García de Gomar, the artistic director of the theatre in Barcelona....

Liceu has chosen L’italiana in Algeri by Rossini to close the year, an opera premiered in 1813 in Venice, which therefore precedes Il barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola and Il Turco in Italia. This is and opera that reached Barcelona quickly, in 1815, but of which in two centuries only 13 performances have taken place. The last ones were in 1982 in a memorable production directed by the late Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. This work, with a libretto by Angelo Anelli, consists essentially...

Anna Netrebko is back to Vienna and gives another demonstration of her current vocal class of its own. She acts as Queen Anne, wife and victim of brutal Henry VIII, the selfish and intrigue womanizer. Anna Bolena is Gaetano Donizetti's 25th opera and his first long lasting success. In the unspectacular and simple direction of Eric Genovese but in elegant costumes by Luisa Spinatelli, it is Anna Netrebko's appearence and elegant play together with her brilliant voice that makes...

You could see a lot of people asking for a ticket in front of the theatre, something quite impossible when one of the singers is Anna Netrebko (at the same time there were young people delivering pamphlets against the diva because her support to M. Putin in the case Ukraine). But it’s impossible to perform a difficult opera as this of Donizetti it only with a big name. The cast was a fine one, and for the ladies the choices were absolutely right (apart the fact that scissors are...

            It is always a bit sad when the curtain goes up in front of an half empty opera house. There is of course the awfully cold February New York weather, no to mention the particularly unpopular Michael Grandage’s production – a large number of critics have described it as not daring enough and boring – that premiered here at the Met in 2011. One could think the cast should be helping: Petter Mattei as Don...