| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 23-Feb-2013 Chicago Symphony Center | Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra deliver a fresh Tristan und Isolde |
 When one hears an Esa-Pekka Salonen interpretation one expects no less than a keen and original approach tempered by an incredible ear for accuracy. This no doubt comes from his prolific work as a composer, work which has of late dominated his professional life.
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| 6-Dec-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | 120 years on: Meyerbeer's Robert le diable returns to Covent Garden |
 COOPER2.jpg) Robert le diable’s 1831 opening was perhaps the most successful opera première of all time. Meyerbeer was lauded by luminaries like Chopin, Dumas, Balzac and Heinrich Heine, the opera was played in 69 cities in its first two years and spawned an entire genre of French Grand Opera. Why, then, has it fallen from grace, last night’s Covent Garden production being the first since 1890?
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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... | |
| 12-Nov-2011 National Theatre | A sobering Hoffmann |
 One of the questions this opera poses for any director is how to link the 'tales' of Hoffmann's three lost loves together and knit them satisfactorily into the Prologue and Epilogue. For this new production which travels to English National Opera next February, Richard Jones solves the puzzle by turning it into an autobiographical journey which ends with a grand meet-up of all the characters Hoffmann has encountered.
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