Orgia: Parra and Bieito Recreate Pasolini

Handel’s oratorio Theodora is unusual among his compositions in that it has created more of a splash in the modern day than it ever did during his lifetime. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden on 16 March 1750 but ran for just three performances and was only revived once in 1755. Although the fact there had been an earthquake a week before the premiere meant that some of the composer’s usual patrons had fled the city, the real reason for the work’s...

In January 1992 Liceu presented a new production for Pikovaya Dama, a relatively infrequent opera in the Barcelona stage despite being one of the best Tchaikovsky operas. At that time, it was unanimously considered to be one of the most luxurious productions the theatre had ever done. In 2003 and 2010 it made the stage again and now, thirty years after its premiere, it has once more come back to Liceu – a rare event for an operatic production. Pikovaya Dama operates in two...

There are few story lines more magical than that of a beautiful young but blind princess who gains sight through the power of love to a young knight. Peter Tchaikovsky's last opera Iolanta is just that - magical, luminous, poetic and with a rare happy ending. The story is set in 15th century Provence. The daughter of King René is blind, but does not know it because her entourage cares for her in such a way that she does not perceive her missing sense as a deficit. Her...

The Marriage of Figaro of 1786 is one of three operas on which Mozart collaborated with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (the others being Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte). It is based on the second of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ trilogy of Figaro plays, while the first was later to be immortalised by Rossini in The Barber of Seville. It centres on the day on which Figaro, valet to Count Almaviva, tries to wed Susanna, maid to the...

Since 2013, the artistic and general director of the Komische Oper Berlin, Barrie Kosky, has dedicated the last production of the year to a work by Paul Abraham. This year it is Die Blume von Hawaii or The Flower of Hawaii, which, in 1931, helped the composer to achieve final recognition as a master of the operetta genre. After its world premiere in Leipzig, this jazz operetta began its tour de force, and not only in Germany. Abraham incorporated many musical elements of the new jazz...

Written in 1841, Nabucco is considered to be the opera that established Giuseppe Verdi’s reputation as a composer. The Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera is based on the biblical books of 2 Kings, Jeremiah, Lamentations and Daniel and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Come, although Antonio Cortese’s 1836 ballet adaptation of the latter was a more important source for Solera than the play itself. The opera originally bore the title of Nabucodonosor,...