Harry Fehr’s New Production of The Elixir of Love at the London Coliseum

Mozart described his Così fan tutte as a dramma giocoso. The Venetian stage director, Damiano Michieletto, who debuted at Liceu with this production created for La Fenice in 2013, is interested a lot more in the dramatic or even tragic side of it, than in the giocoso element. It starts with a distorted take on Don Alfonso’s character, who turns from a “vecchio filosofo” to a cynical, embittered alcoholic who manipulates and mistreats the characters. From...

Turandot started its world-wide successful career from the stage of La Scala in Spring 1926, one and half year after the death of its author. The staging of Puccini’s last and unfinished masterpiece – hailed by a renowned study as “The End of the Great Tradition” of Italian opera – under Toscanini’s baton was a major event. La Scala’s choice to open its special season for Expo 2015 (running non-stop from May 1rst to October 31rst) strikes us...

The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino belongs to the most prestigious music Festivals in Italy with a broad variety of spectacles consisting of opera, concerts, recitals, films and accompanying venues. The international reputable maestro Zubin Metha is the musical director and a strong supporter of the troublesome Italian culture scene as well as in Valencia in Spain, where this year production of Ludwig Van Beethoven's Fidelio comes from. Florentine director Pier'Alli has created his...

Polish composer Karol Szymanowski’s Król Roger (King Roger) is by any measure an operatic rarity. Written between 1918 and 1924, and enjoying a handful of outings until 1949, it was entirely neglected for the following twenty-six years. It has experienced something of a renaissance since 1975, when conductor Charles Mackerras led a performance with the New Opera Company in London, but Kasper Holten’s production still marks the first time that it has ever had an outing at...

Conductor Oksana Lyniv has entered the pit. An expectant silence has fallen over the audience. Suddenly, a ragtag group of long-haired men steps onstage. One introduces himself as the manager of the band Ciel. They’ve lost their lead singer, Ory. Have we seen him? So begins our Rossini-led romp through the 1980s. Instead of hoop skirts: leg warmers; instead of a chateau: a bowling alley. The captain of the women’s bowling team, Adele, is a pious and melancholy sort who has...

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...