Rusalka at the Gran Teatre del Liceu: Beware of Tales

Emperor Titus was quite an impressive historical figure. During the reign of his father Emperor Vespasian, he occupied several position in the Roman administration and army. He won the Jewish war, conquered and destroyed Jerusalem and the big Temple. With the proceeds of this crusade, he built the Coliseum in Rome and acquired a frightening reputation within roman society : people were insecured with the total change, once he followed his father as Emperor at the age of forty. He...

 With merciless sequence is the audience drawn into Wozzeck’s circles of suffering in Büchner’s play. Berg’s music creates passion and compassion of and for the characters and victims of this inescapable orbit. The precision of Andrea Breth’s unstoppable clockwork in light of Wozzeck’s fate is a supreme staging and interpretation completely based on strict reserve and subordination to plot, text, and subtext. The purism of the approach...

Eighteen years ago, the first complete direction of Richard Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen in the Netherlands took place. It was then a highly regarded and rewarded project by the Libanese director Pierre Audi - and his stage designer George Tsypin - for the Netherlands Opera House (Nederlanse Opera) in Amsterdam. The direction relies on the concept of bringing the story close to the audience. It is the last time that the cycle is performed, and more than 165 000 people have seen...

Mozart's famous Singspiel, a new gender at his time of composing, returns to the charming and historic Cuvillés' Theater, a perfect setting on his own with its originals baroque stalls of the 18th century. Munich's second opera house, the Gärtnerplatztheater is currently under renovation, so the ensemble uses different locations in the city. This new production of Mozart's Entführung aus dem Serail is fresh colourful and fast moving. It is the first opera...

After Los Angeles and Valencia, this production has arrived at the Theater an der Wien, Vienna's third opera house having a long impressive history and tradition. Its origin is closely linked to the impressario Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart's libretist for The Magic flute. In recent years, it has been focussing on presenting cutting edge directors and interesting productions. Verdi's I due Foscari followed on the success of his Ernani, was first presented in 1844, and is...

When Sergej Prokofjew’s opera „Fiery Angel“ was first performed in 1955 Russian or better Soviet music was still governed by the strict rules of socialist realism. Subsequently Prokofjew’s piece exposes  both strong anticlerical and antibourgeois sentiments : A woman, Renate, has fallen in love with an angel when she was  a girl and since then she is trying to find this angel again. In her quest she is accompanied by Rupprecht, a young man who is as...