Saioa Hernández has found in the character of Gioconda the role upon which she is building a significant part of her career. She was the most eagerly awaited singer in this new production of La Gioconda, which has just opened at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, and this marks the sixth different staging of Amilcare Ponchielli’s opera in which the Madrid-born soprano has taken part. That is no small achievement, given that the work, though not a rarity, is performed relatively...

Staatsoper unter den Linden: A Götterdämmerung with emotions The Ring comes to an anti-climactic end. Thanks to the singers and orchestra, it is still an evening well worth attending. Having reached the last evening of the Ring der Nibelungen, audience members are always curious as to how a stage director tackles the grand collapse of society envisaged by Richard Wagner with the reurning of the Ring to the Rhine. How will stage director and designer Dmitri Tcherniakov handle...

Teatro San Carlo and Napels are linked closely to the opera and its history over centuries. It has been here that this genre has been created and where the tradition and the education has been kept high. Only lately, the theater was effected by an economic crisis and has suffered from political influences.However, this architectural jewel still attracts attention. Maestro Zubin Mehta is appearing for his first time here and conducts his personally beloved opera Tristan and Isolde by...