| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 2-Mar-2013 Semperoper | The highs and lows of Stefan Herheim's Manon Lescaut at the Dresden Semperoper |
 Puccini is one of opera’s best loved composers. With so many popular titles to his name, it is somewhat surprising how infrequently his first great success, Manon Lescaut, is performed today. What makes this even more unusual is the opera’s universal appeal. It contains some wonderful music, with all the deep emotion of the mature Puccini combined with a youthful energy and simplicity, and its verismo plot is easily digestible, even for opera virgins.Read full review... | |
| 17-Aug-2012 Theater an der Wien | Rarely produced Rossini at the Theater an der Wien |
 Written in 1819 and belonging to the opera seria chapter of Rossini’s career, the florid score of La donna del lago doesn’t so much respond to as resist its unabashedly romantic libretto. Within twenty years of the opera’s composition Sir Walter Scott’s Highland epics had spawned a further two dozen operatic spin-offs, but far from venturing onto psychodramatic territory as Donizetti did in Lucia di Lammermoor, Rossini only seldom permits the emotional immediacy of an unadorned vocal line.Read full review... | |
| 18-Nov-2010 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur at the Royal Opera |
ASHMORE.jpg) Giacomo Puccini comprehensively eclipsed the other Italian composers of his era. Three of them remain in the repertoire as one hit wonders: Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Francesco Cilea, whose four act Adriana Lecouvreur opened at Covent Garden last night. It's the story of a love triangle which ends in murder, set backstage at the Comédie Française in the 18th century and based on a true story (or at least, on a story that was widely believed at the time): the real Adrienne Lecouvreur died in 1730, probably poisoned by her rival, the Princesse de Bouillon.
Read full review... | |
