Orgia: Parra and Bieito Recreate Pasolini

It has often been said, in a variety of ways and with a range of argumentations, that Don Giovanni belongs to the limited group of ‘impossible operas’ or ‘trap operas’ in the sense that they are so big, perfect and powerful, and their deep subject – rather than their superficial plot – is so transcendental that, on one hand they are almost always bigger than their performers, and on the other hand they also generate such perfection expectations in the...

L’elisir d’amore of 1832 is one of Gaetano Donizetti’s most popular and light-hearted works. Set in a village in the Basque Country at the end of the eighteenth century it sees the humble Nemorino love the landowner Adina, even as she tells him she is fickle and that he should forget her. When, however, she reads the legend of Tristan and Isolde, Nemorino is inspired to ask travelling quack doctor Dulcamara if he has any of the potion that enabled Tristan to win his love....

Aribert Reimann – now in his 80ies – is one of the most important and prominent contemporary German composers. Since composition of his opera Lear (first performed with grand success at Munich State Opera in 1978), he considered the creation of another stage work based on one of the huge mythological characters of world literature, Medea. But it's only when discovering the Austrian writer Grillparzer’s adaptation (first performed in 1821) that the subject...

There was a lot to see and somehow nothing. Romeo Castellucci is the Italian director of this new and highly expected production of Tannhäuser at the Munich Nationaltheater, whose history is strongly linked with the oeuvre of Richard Wagner. Romeo Castellucci showcases strong and intense pictures in a continuous but nonetheless uneasy and unclear to follow flow of symbolic acts, and in a way absorbed in the story plot. Laureate in set design and painting in Bologna, he founded the...

Very often the experience of opera takes on an exclusively artistic or aesthetic character and we live it as an experience of the spirit. Sometimes, though, the experience of opera resembles more that of a sports event, or a risk sports event to be more precise. We are then in front of a form of vocal athletics. It is a different experience, with lots of adrenaline, very gratifying in the moment and perhaps less so in the long term. La fille du régiment, by Donizetti, is an...

Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo, which premiered in 1867 in Paris as Don Carlos, exists in several versions, and, depending on which is performed, is either his longest or one of his longest operas. Although the first performance was in French, Nicholas Hytner’s 2008 production for the Royal Opera House employs the Modena version of 1886, which is one of several to utilise an Italian libretto. Don Carlo ; © ROH, Catherine Ashmore Don Carlo ; © ROH, Catherine...