First UK professional performance of Verdi’s Alzira
What is so wrong with Verdi’s Alzira that the current run at the Buxton Festival should constitute the first professional performances of the work in Britain? The plot dealing with the conflict between the native tribes and the Spanish conquistadores…
Brescianello’s Tisbe at the Buxton Festival
“A candidate for the finest Baroque opera ever” proudly proclaims the programme note for Giuseppe Antonio Brescianello’s Tisbe, performed at this year’s Buxton Festival. Well, it may certainly be worth the odd revival, but it is no masterpiece. The plot,…
Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto in Cologne
For a work of its quality, Cimarosa’s Il Matrimonio Segreto gets surprisingly few performances. A pioneering example of buffo opera, it looks forward to Rossini with its pitter-patter arias for the lower voice, its swooping melodies and, above all, its…
Der goldene Drache by Peter Eötvös in Koblenz
The opera Der goldene Drache at the Theater Koblenz was my first encounter with the music of Peter Eötvös and it made a strong impression. Its compelling character lies in its ability to underpin the drama and the text through…
Die Lustigen Nibelungen by Oscar Straus in Karlsruhe
Oscar Straus is best known in the Anglophone world for his operetta The Chocolate Soldier, based on G.B. Shaw’s Arms and the Man; less familiar is his earlier piece, Die lustigen Nibelungen. Strictly speaking this is a parody of the…
Kurt Weill’s Der Silbersee in Pforzheim
Der Silbersee, written by Georg Kaiser with music by Kurt Weill, is a fascinating work with a fascinating history. A sharp leftist, expressionist piece but with a poetic, optimistic ending, it was premiered simultaneously in Berlin, Erfurt and Magdeburg in…
Brothers by Daníel Bjarnason in Reykjavik
Daníel Bjarnason’s Brothers was given its premiere at Aarhus in 2017. The production by Kasper Holten, designed by Steffen Aarfing, has with some changes been given a single performance in the composer’s homeland, Iceland. It is a bleak piece relating…
Luisa Miller in Zurich
Luisa Miller is an intense tragedy focusing on family intrigue and feudal oppression. It has only one hit number- the tenor aria “Quando le sere al placido“- but contains a series of vocal encounters that bring out the best of…
Maria Stuarda in Zurich
Maria Stuarda tells the story of the relationship between two great regal characters and Donizetti’s opera revolves around the confrontation of two great sopranos, with the Earl of Leicester little more than a foil for each of them. Elizabeth is…
La Cenerentola in Basel
La Cenerentola is unquestionably my favourite Rossini opera. The music is exhilarating, the ensembles brilliantly devised between the different voices and the witty libretto not eclipsing a certain sentimental poignancy. I have never seen an unconventional staging of the piece…
Rossini’s Donna del lago in Lausanne
Rossini’s Donna del lago contains some fine bel canto music but, notwithstanding its basis in Walter Scott’s poem, has a creaking plot and a prosaic, inconsequential libretto. Understandably, stage directors have been tempted to read it into its story of…
The Ten Operas I would Most Like to See
Bellini, Beatrice di Tenda Boito, Nerone Boughton, The Immortal Hour Busoni, Die Brautwahl Faure, Pénélope Massenet, La Navarraise Rimsky-Korsakov, The Legend of the Invisble City of Kitezh Spontini, La Vestale Strauss, Die Aegyptische Helena Wolf, Der Corregidor
Richard Löwenherz by Handel and Telemann at Magdeburg
When Handel’s Riccardo Primo was performed in Hamburg in 1729 it was given in a version prepared by Telemann then active there and it was his version which was the leading event in this year’s Telemann festival at Magdeburg. Richard…
Zeller’s Der Obersteiger in Annaberg
A trip to Annaberg-Buchholz for Carl Zeller’s Der Obersteiger. The former silver mining town is in a relatively remote part of East Germany near to the Czech border. Though small, it boasts a permanent opera company whose programme features much…
Auber’s Domino Noir in Liège
Daniel-François-Esprit Auber was a highly successful composer of opéra-comique in the first half of the 19th century but today, outside francophone countries, his works are rarely performed. The current staging of Le domino noir at the Opéra Royal de Liège…
Olivier Py’s Dialogues des Carmélites in Caen
Word had got around that Olivier Py’s production of Dialogues des Carmélites originally mounted at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 2013, preserved for posterity on a DVD and recently revived, was not to be missed. Rumours of this kind are…
Gounod’s Philémon et Baucis in Tours
Gounod’s Philémon et Baucis is an enjoyable comic opera featuring the encounters between a Darby and Joan aged couple and Jupiter. While he is out to punish mortals for their bad behaviour he is treated by the couple with warm…
Glinka’s A Life for the Tsar in Frankfurt
It is not easy to find performances of works by Glinka, father of Russian opera though he may be. So, I was pleased to have a chance to get to A Life for the Tsar, given in its original title…
A Dallapiccola-Rihm Double Bill in Brussels
Luigi Dallapiccola, a predominantly serialist composer who died in 1975, is no longer familiar to concert- and opera-going audiences but in the 1950s and 1960s his compositions were regularly performed, most notably his one act opera Il prigioniero, the subject…
Götterdämmerung in Leipzig
With Götterdämmerung, the Leipzig Ring came to an end, and it is time to reflect not only on this performance but also on the cycle as a whole. As regards Ulf Schirmer and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, there is not…