| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 15-Feb-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | The music redeems unanswered questions in the Met's beautiful new Parsifal |
 Before the music in the Metropolitan Opera’s new Parsifal starts, a black but reflective curtain drapes the front of the stage. It is dim enough not quite to show the audience, but it picks out the chandeliers. As Daniele Gatti coaxes the orchestra through the opening lines of the score the tableau becomes translucent, first seeming to mirror the front rows of the stalls, but slowly revealing the chorus, sitting in rows. Parsifal stands, in the centre, chosen. The men slowly remove their workaday suits, socks, and shoes, while the women turn.Read full review... | |
| 21-Dec-2012 La Scala | A dream cast united in La Scala's Lohengrin |
 The first opera of the season at La Scala is an event of huge cultural significance in Italy, so it raised some hackles when, for Giuseppe Verdi’s centenary year, the management passed over Verdi in favour of Wagner’s Lohengrin. But even Italians disappointed by the insult to their culture found it impossible to quarrel with the quality of the singing talent on show.Read full review... | |
| 1-Sep-2012 Großes Festspielhaus | Salzburg's first spiritual festival closes with Verdi's Requiem |
 Faith and glamour have bookended this year’s Salzburg Festival, a move met with incredulity in certain quarters and yet one not entirely alien to Austrian customs, if one looks to the 20 or so most glittering events of the Viennese ball season, which is promptly curtailed by Ash Wednesday (still observed by much of the population here with high Catholic asceticism).Read full review... | |
| 27-Jul-2012 Royal Albert Hall | Prom 18: Beethoven's Ninth |
 Few conductors could hold an audience's applause whilst shaking hands with every member of the orchestra and then speaking extensively about politics. Daniel Barenboim, though, on completion of a week-long Beethoven cycle, did so and then dashed to the Olympic opening ceremony to bear the Olympic flag alongside Ban Ki-Moon, among others. Some critics have written in the last week that no amount of sociopolitical benevolence can paper over minor technical flaws in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra's playing.Read full review... | |
