Eight years after their débuts in Leo Delibes's Lakmé, Sabine Devieilhe and Frédéric Antoun triumph once again as the ill-fated lovers in this orientalist Romeo and Juliette story. Set in British India in the 19th century, Nilakantha, a Brahmin priest, is stoking...
Offenbach's La Vie Parisienne is perfect holiday fare, bubbly, joyful, and whimsical, especially when designed and directed by French fashion designer Christian Lacroix. We know that the famous couturier is a magician of colours, a lover of shimmering fabrics, a...
Opéra national de Paris's new production of Verdi's Aida, which premiered online on Feb. 18th, marks the Paris debut of the Dutch director Lotte de Beer, recently appointed director of the Vienna Volksoper. She angles the spotlight on the problematic stereotypes which...
The most prolific operatic composer of the postwar period, Hans Werner Henze's contribution to the music theatre canon includes some 30 works encompassing a wide variety of musical styles and literary topics. His 1990 opera Das verattene Meer is based on Yukio...
Probably nothing could have nudged me out of my semi-confinement in Normandy and reluctantly onto my first plane since January, if it weren’t an invitation to hear Jonas Kaufmann as Radames in an outdoor concert performance of Aida given by Teatro di San Carlo in...
Hollywood film director James Gray, winner of the Golden Lion for his film “Little Odessa” (1994) and nominated several times for the Palme d’Or in Cannes, claims that directing Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro was one of the “artistic highlights of his career.” It also...
With a double bill that opened the Dutch National Opera (DNO) 19/20 season on Sept. 5th, Robert Carsen celebrates the traditional tandem of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci with a special twist. First, he begins with Pagliacci rather than...
For the last production of the season celebrating the 350th anniversary of Opéra national de Paris, Mozart’s Don Giovanni was entrusted to Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove. Famous for his minimalist stagings and radical innovations at the Toneelgroep, a repertory...
Between the Parisian museums, theatres and opera houses, when Robert Carsen is in town, it is very likely that he is up to more than one project if not three or four. In many ways, he is like the great fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld for whom he paid homage in a...
When Opéra Comique announced it would be programming Jules Massenet’s Manon (seen May 13th) as part of their spring season I was overjoyed. Not only is it one of the most beloved operas of the French Romantic repertoire but it premiered in this very house in 1884 and...
Alessandro Scarlatti’s Il primo omicidio (1707), recounts the first murder in the history of mankind. Cain and Abel are the sons of Adam and Eve. Cain, a farmer, becomes enraged when the Lord accepts the offering of his brother Abel, a shepherd, in preference to his...