Orgia: Parra and Bieito Recreate Pasolini

The final days of the prestigious Salzburg Festival still offer highlights, hosting highly regarded international classic stars and reknown orchestras, as Maestro Riccardo Muti and his Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini, founded in 2004, who appear with a concert version of Giuseppe Verdi's early opera, Ernani. It is the touching lovestory of Ernani and Elvira and the heroic honorship of Ernani, fulfilling his deadly oath once he has succeeded in life. It is the puzzling...

Lot of open questions, the audience remains clueless, some show their disappointment and incomprehension after a new interpretation of Ludwig van Beethoven's only and beloved opera Fidelio. It is this year's main new opera production of the acclaimed Salzburg Festival. This piece is for most music lovers the incarnation of a freedom drama and the triumph of love. The German director Claus Guth has put his hands on this drama of his compatriote to convert it to a revolutionary new...

It is an artistic concept of the Norwegian director Stefan Herheim which converts the traditional perceptions of a play. It is his way of a very intelligent nearly limitless presentation of the reconstruction of a piece. He shows in Hoffmann a man, who deconstructs himself, looking for his identity in his tales, which we all thought to know so far. Stefan Herheim further develops his radical concept by analysing the composer and the time of creation. Having said so, it is easier to...

Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore is a legendary opera that returns often to the Chorégies d'Orange; older opera fans still remember the famous 1972 production featuring Montserrat Caballé at her zenith, the sonorous Lando Bartolini, the hair-raising Irina Arkhipova and thoroughbred Piero Cappuccilli in the principal roles. In 2015, the star for the evening is Roberto Alagna, who has appeared regularly on the stage of the Théâtre Antique since 1993, but who...

The title is misleading as it is not mentioned to be a historical drama. The libretto of this opera is taken from surrealistic texts by Antonin Artaud dating from 1933, and are enriched by lyrics by Octavio Paz. It is actually a musical drama without a narrative, even it is linked to the historical fact of the conquest of America, but the composer's intention is more to accuse our civilisation, social organisation, capitalism, war and after all the central relation between man and...

Bregenz is always a big spectacle. Everything seems to be gigantic for the 7000 visitors of the so called Seebühne, the biggest opera stage built on a vast platform on Lake Constance. The audience arrives from all over the world demonstrating the international reputation this festival has achieved in its long lasting existence for technically nearly perfect sound installations, spectacular stagedesign and a pittoresque setting along the lakeshore. After a hot summer day, some winds...