Nadine Sierra was the big winner on the opening night of Manon. Her voice is at its best, splendid. The high notes are easy, well timbred, and brilliant. The dynamic control is of great quality and the projection of the singing, without being magnificent, is fully satisfactory. The exhaustive technical control of breathing and emission allows her to sing naturally and with and ease, without apparent physical effort and without dropping in performance over the course of a show lasting...

The idea of creating a ‘trilogy’ with the three operas that Mozart composed with libretti by Lorenzo Da Ponte is fantastic. Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte were composed one after the other, a few years apart. There are numerous musical connections between them and more than one underlying dramatic connection as well. Bringing together a kind of ‘Mozart Marathon’ – nine hours’ worth of opera – by presenting the three...

Don Giovanni of 1787 is one of three operas that Mozart wrote with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (the others being Le nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte). It tells of the eponymous hero, or rather antihero, who effortlessly conquers thousands of women. Although in the process he makes many enemies, the ladies he has cheated have a habit of coming back for more or trying to save him, and in the end he is responsible for his own downfall. When the ghost of the Commendatore who he...

Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilèges had been missing from La Scala stage for nearly 40 years, since 1978, when they had been presented as a diptych under George Prêtre’s baton. Their comeback in the production from the Glyndebourne Festival from 2012 (resumed in 2015) has been warmly welcomed by the Milanese audience as thoroughly enjoyable, brilliantly conceived entremets between the main courses of La fanciulla del...