Hammerstein and Kern’s Show Boat is a true classic of American musical theater - a tale of life on the Mississippi from the 1880s to the 1920s is both a poignant love story and a powerful reminder of the bitter legacy of racism. "A triumph—a stylish,…

Experimentum Mundi is arguably the most important work in the field of contemporary music in recent decades. In one fell swoop, Giorgio Battistelli's pioneering work has fulfilled all the artistic aspirations and dreams of his century. In the wake of…

In the Gluck-Year 2014 the Teatro Real in Madrid celebrated the outstanding success of the esteemed director Krysztof Warlikowski’s newly produced staging of „Alceste“, under the musical baton of Ivor Bolton. (Premiers on the 7th of February 2014). A…

Libretto by Arrigo Boito after William Shakespeare’s comedy “The Merry Wives of Windsor” Damiano Michieletto is bursting with ideas when it comes to combining illusion and reality. (Tagesspiegel). Outside the Casa Verdi in Milan, the famous old…

Antonín Dvorák’s next to last opera draws its substance from the underwater wonderland of little mermaids, Undines and Melusines: Rusalka, a water nymph, wishes to become human in order to be loved by the young prince. Despite being warned against it…

A forlorn, aged philosopher sets out on a perilous course when he makes a deal with the Devil in this monumental treatment of the Faust tale—an enticingly impressive production from San Francisco Opera. Boito’s resplendent retelling of Goethe’s Faust…

Tchaikowsky’s “Merchant of Venice” offers proof of David Pountney’s eye for buried gems of the opera literature. The tried and trusted team behind Keith Warner and an elite cast make the posthumous premiere at 2013’s Bregenz Festival “a restitution…

Once known for his stately grand operas written for Napoleon and the courts of Paris, Berlin and Vienna, Gaspare Spontini posthumously surprised posterity with a light-hearted “commedia per musica” that was found at an antiquarian book dealer in…

In seinem Sommernachtstraum verwebt William Shakespeare virtuos die komplexen Handlungsstränge zu einem Ganzen: drei Liebespaare auf der Suche nach ihrer wahren Liebe, Verwechslungen, ein Liebestrank, die Geschehnisse so vielschichtig und zweideutig…

“A fresh, charming and perceptive production, magical and irresistible!” (New York Times) “All narrative and poetry is nothing but the key to true dreams” (Hans Sachs). Spontaneously emerging from just such a truthful dream by the cobbler-poet on…