| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 20-Oct-2012 War Memorial Opera House | Lohengrin returns to San Francisco in effective new production |
 Wagner’s Lohengrin was the last work the master completed before settling into a mid-career six-year slump. During this compositional hiatus, he wrote the poems for his Ring operas and ruminated in print on various topics, musical and otherwise, but work on the music dramas essentially ceased.Read full review... | |
| 31-Mar-2012 Theater an der Wien | Passion week begins in Vienna with Beethoven's Christus am Ölberge |
 This opening concert to Vienna OsterKlang festival was a reproduction of sorts: on 5th April 1803 a slate of Beethoven works including the first and second symphonies, the third piano concerto and the oratorio Christus am Ölberge was performed in this very theatre. All except for the first symphony were premières, though it is astonishing to think that Beethoven’s original plans for the event were even more ambitious (it is not known what was excluded, but he was forced to cut the programme short).Read full review... | |
| 27-Feb-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | Rusalka comes from Salzburg to the Royal Opera |
 BARDA.jpg) Most of Dvořák's ten operas are rarely performed, but Rusalka, his tragic fairy tale of the water nymph who takes human form, has become popular in recent years and is a regular visitor to British opera houses. Last night's production, by directors Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, started life at the 2008 Salzburg festival and has now arrived in Covent Garden. I found it an evening of opposites: seldom have my feelings been so polarised about different aspects of a production.
Read full review... | |
| 22-Oct-2011 Staatsoper | Salome in Vienna |
 When Richard Strauss first wrote Salome, he was unable to get it performed in his home city of Vienna, so shocking was the material with its heavy eroticism and necrophiliac ending (the première was in Dresden). A century on, times are more permissive, and Salome features in the seasons both of Vienna's Volksoper and of the Staatsoper, where we saw it last night.
Read full review... | |
