| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 21-Apr-2013 New York City Center | New York City Opera closes season with Alden's riotous La Périchole |
 Henri Bergson famously defined comedy as “something mechanical encrusted on the living”. One suspects that Jacques Offenbach would have been a fan of this definition, and that Christopher Alden most certainly is. Alden’s new production of La Périchole, which closes the New York City Opera’s season, is strange, abrasive, and also extremely funny, careening past the everyday to end up somewhere deeply bizarre.
Read full review... | |
| 28-Feb-2013 Sydney Opera House: Opera Theatre | Opera Australia serve up a comically modern Orpheus in the Underworld in Sydney |
 In his director’s note, Jonathan Biggins writes, ‘All I can hope for is that you go out of the theatre feeling a bit more cheerful than when you came in’. If that was the opera’s aim, then few could claim that it was not successful in achieving it. The ABC’s Limelight magazine describes the production as ‘a razor sharp, satirical romp that’s camper than a row of tents and twice as funny’.Read full review... | |
| 19-Jan-2013 Walt Disney Concert Hall | Susan Graham and Renée Fleming stunning at Disney Hall |
 One would think that either Renée Fleming or Susan Graham alone would be reason enough to sell out a large venue such as Disney Hall. But everything is bigger in Hollywood, and the LA Phil brought both artists together for a one-night recital of French art song. But even that wasn’t enough. This was not an ordinary recital with neatly arranged sets of the typical repertoire finished off with a few predictable encores, concluded in two hours’ time. No, this was a thoughtful survey of French mélodies and their English-speaking muses, with slideshows, anecdotes, and stories.
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| 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... | |
