| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 3-Oct-2012 War Memorial Opera House | Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi in San Francisco |
 In the last few decades, Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi has flirted with standard repertory status, but it has not sufficiently won the hearts of opera-goers to warrant more than the occasional production. Though blessed with some of the composer’s finest melodies, the opera has problems for modern audiences. Firstly, the tale does not follow Shakespeare’s version of the star-cross’d lovers’ story; the protagonists are already in love when the opera begins, which means no ball, no love at first sight, no balcony scene.Read full review... | |
| 22-Jul-2012 Lincoln Theater Napa Valley | Joshua Bell and Hélène Grimaud raise the roof at Festival del Sole |
 The Napa Valley is famous for its picturesque countryside, stunning weather and fine wine. With the ambitious Festival del Sole concluding their seventh season on Sunday night with a concert featuring two titans of classical music - Joshua Bell and Hélène Grimaud – they proved that “wine country” has even more to offer the Northern California region than that which makes them one of the premier destination spots in the world.
Read full review... | |
| 6-Jul-2012 Theater an der Wien | Tales retold: Hoffmann restaged at the Theater an der Wien |
 The venerable Viennese tradition of airing dirty operatic laundry in public found an unlikely proponent this season in the form of the Theater an der Wien’s mild-mannered director Roland Geyer, who, unhappy with William Friedkin’s production of The Tales of Hoffmann in March, abruptly sacked the American director and announced he would devise a new staging himself a matter of months before the second run.Read full review... | |
| 2-Apr-2012 Theater an der Wien | Strong storytelling in the Theater an der Wien’s Tales of Hoffmann |
 Director William Friedkin doesn’t put a dramaturgical foot wrong in his Theater an der Wien production of The Tales of Hoffmann and yet doesn’t challenge, or even engage with, any of the opera’s Romantic positions. Did the notion that serious artists aren’t entitled to live life, for instance, ever have much currency outside of the 19th-century?Read full review... | |
