| 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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| 24-Oct-2012 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden | The cycle concludes: Götterdämmerung at the Royal Opera |
 Monumental in scale and scope, Götterdämmerung is a work to which it is hard to be indifferent. For many, the idea of an evening of fantasy opera lasting nearly seven hours is unimaginable, so uncongenial is the subject material and so great the attention span demanded. For Wagner fans - and Ring fans in particular - it's a riveting theatrical and musical experience, the zenith of opera as an art form. Last night at Covent Garden was my first live Götterdämmerung, spent in the company of around three thousand of those fans.
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| 18-Jul-2012 Sydney Opera House: Opera Theatre | Opera Australia pushes boundaries with Korngold's Die tote Stadt |
 Korngold’s Die tote Stadt is an extraordinary opera, an often underrated masterpiece of the 20th century. On the face of it, it has a simple plot – the protagonist Paul, unable to overcome the death of his wife, falls in love with another woman, Marietta, similar to his dead wife in many ways. Overcome with feelings of guilt and betrayal, he eventual kills Marietta, only to wake up and discover it was all a dream. This is, however, a simple plot with deep contemporary resonances.
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| 24-Mar-2012 Oper Leipzig | Redemption and Renewal for All in Oper Leipzig’s Parsifal |
 Leipzig routinely honours its native son with performances of Parsifal scheduled on and around Good Friday, which tempts a state of ritualized enactment best confined to the opera itself. (Vienna maintains the same tradition and is a magnet for self-appointed enforcers of the Bayreuth applause customs and their confrontational silencing of the ‘transgressors’.) The permissive atmosphere in Leipzig was a great deal more pleasant, with much of the audience applauding at the end of Act I and those with a need for solitude just quietly slipping away.
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