| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 14-Feb-2013 Staatsoper | Nostalgia for the Italian Fifties: The Vienna Staatsoper's La Cenerentola |
 What has made Rossini and his librettist Jacopo Ferretti’s take on Cinderella survive on the opera stage for almost 200 years now is not only the universal archetype of the downtrodden girl who is redeemed by Prince Charming, nor its enchanting music: the absence of fairy-tale symbols like the pumpkin carriage and the glass shoe (barefoot ladies would have been too outrageous a sight on an Italian stage of the time) has perhaps also helped to make it timeless, practical to stage, and largely director-proof.
Read full review... | |
| 29-Dec-2012 Staatsoper | Bechtolf's Ariadne auf Naxos at the Vienna Staatsoper |
 A new production of Ariadne auf Naxos is a major draw in itself, but a queue for standing room whose end is on the other side of the opera house is news even in Vienna, especially when the performance is not the première, but the fourth in a run of five and also the one that Franz Welser-Möst left to Jeffrey Tate, who has conducted the piece to positive reviews before. But with no rehearsals and a pit full of substitutes, he found himself unfairly challenged by scratchy violins, impure brass and winds, and botched entries from all directions.Read full review... | |
| 3-Aug-2012 Haus für Mozart | Ariadne auf Naxos dismantled at the Salzburg Festival |
 Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos was first performed in 1912, in a production directed by Max Reinhardt. Unlike the version usually seen today, this first Ariadne was a long-winded play-opera-ballet hybrid, incorporating a full production of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme with dances to incidental music by Strauss followed by the short opera. Less than a decade later these three men would found the Salzburg Festival, so it seems only appropriate that the festival is celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Ariadne.Read full review... | |
