| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 9-Mar-2013 Oslo Cathedral | An ecumenical night in Oslo Cathedral: The Oslo Philharmonic in Mendelssohn and Bruckner |
 Pairing Mendelssohn’s Fifth Symphony, the so-called “Reformation Symphony”, and Bruckner’s Third Mass in F minor seemed to me at first a rather novel, but very interesting idea. It was perhaps not the most daring of programmes, but certainly a very interesting one, picking a symphony steeped in Protestant tradition and then a Catholic mass. In a way, the programme of Saturday’s concert with the Oslo Philharmonic seemed almost a tribute to ecumenicalism in general.
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| 2-Mar-2013 Oslo Opera House, Main Stage | Easter in Italy: Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci at the Norwegian National Opera |
 Nothing says “Happy Easter” like a bit of alcohol-fuelled murder on the church steps, right? With their new double bill of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, the Norwegian National Opera certainly seems to think so!
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| 1-Mar-2013 Oslo Cathedral | Oslo Church Music Festival: Passion and poetry with The Tallis Scholars |
 It would seem that Easter has come early to Oslo. Friday marked the opening of the Oslo International Church Music Festival, a festival that this year is devoted to the ever-paschal theme of the passion. The opening concert was held in the Oslo Cathedral and was sung by the British vocal ensemble The Tallis Scholars.
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| 16-Feb-2013 Royal Swedish Opera | The Nina Stemme show: Puccini's Turandot at the Royal Swedish Opera |
 An obsessively man-hating princess, a slave girl who really needs to open up a bit more about her feelings, a prince who actually fell in love at first sight, and an unhealthily large dose of exoticism? Why, it can only be Puccini’s Turandot. Saturday marked the première of the Royal Swedish Opera’s new production of Puccini’s final opera, with none other than Nina Stemme taking on the title role for the first time.
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| 9-Feb-2013 Oslo Opera House, Main Stage | Pappano returns home: The Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Oslo |
 Little-known fact no. 1: Antonio Pappano made his conducting debut at the Norwegian National Opera, conducting La Bohème in 1987.
Little-known fact no. 2: Antonio Pappano was music director of the Norwegian National Opera in the early 90s.
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| 31-Jan-2013 Oslo Concert Hall (Konserthus) | Truls Mørk, Vasily Petrenko and the Oslo Philharmonic play Shostakovich and Bruckner |
 Sometimes an eagerly awaited performance starts out brilliantly, more or less how you thought it would, but then it kind of fizzles out towards the middle, only to return with a vengeance at the end. This was more or less the case with Vasily Petrenko and the Oslo Philharmonic this Thursday.
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| 17-Jan-2013 Oslo Opera House, Main Stage | Don Pasquale at the Norwegian National Opera |
 What do you get when you mix an old man with a penchant for younger women, a young woman, her equally young lover and a scheming doctor, and set it all sometime around the 1960s, although you wouldn’t really know it had it not been for the petticoats? A rather successful night at the opera, it would seem.
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| 14-Jan-2013 The Norwegian Opera and Ballet | This is all: Britten's The Rape of Lucretia at the Norwegian National Opera |
 Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia is, as the title implies, not an easy opera subject-wise. It is based on André Obey’s play Le viol de Lucrèce, which in turn is partially based on Shakespeare’s poem The Rape of Lucrece. This was Britten’s third opera, and the first of his so-called chamber operas, operas with small orchestras and small casts.
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| 22-Nov-2012 Oslo Concert Hall (Konserthus) | A somewhat Spanish evening with the Oslo Philharmonic |
 Last Thursday’s concert with the Oslo Philharmonic featured four pieces with little or no connection to each other, other than three of the pieces being either written by Spanish-speaking composers or actually being about Spain. Yet, apart from one piece, it all came together into a rather coherent whole.
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| 15-Nov-2012 Oslo Opera House, Main Stage | A celebration of sound: The Berlin Philharmonic in the Oslo Opera House |
 How very fitting that the Berlin Philharmonic, an orchestra that claims to be made up of 128 soloists, should start Thursday’s concert and their European tour with perhaps one of the most soloistic orchestral pieces ever written: Ligeti’s Atmosphères.
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| 1-Nov-2012 Oslo Concert Hall (Konserthus) | Rachmaninov and Nielsen with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra |
 Thursday’s concert with the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra started not with music, but with an award ceremony. It was the Norwegian Sibelius Society that gave away its annual award for the strengthening of cultural ties between Norway and Finland. Present were the Sibelius Society’s chair Stephan Barratt-Due, Finland’s ambassador to Norway Maimo Henriksson, and the recipient of the award, Sinikka Langeland. After she received the award, she sang a traditional Forest Finnish song, accompanying herself on the kantele, a traditional Finnish instrument.Read full review... | |
| 25-Oct-2012 Oslo Concert Hall (Konserthus) | Blood on the Floor with the Oslo Philharmonic |
PhilipGatward01.jpg) Francis Bacon’s painting Blood on the Floor shows a splash of blood on a wooden floor, surrounded by orange walls with a light bulb and switch above it. This painting originally inspired Mark-Anthony Turnage to write this one-movement piece of the same name, commissioned by the Frankfurt-based Ensemble Modern in 1993 and premièred in 1994. After the première it was expanded, also by commission from Ensemble Modern, into a much larger nine-movement piece with a solo jazz quartet and an expanded orchestra. This version was premièred in 1996.Read full review... | |
| 13-Oct-2012 The Norwegian Opera and Ballet | Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo |
 Vincenzo Bellini’s operas are not among those that are played most often in Norway. This Saturday’s concert performance of I Capuleti e i Montecchi at the Norwegian Opera in Oslo was the second ever to take place in Norway, the first being a concert performance in the Oslo Concert House back in 2001. Saturday’s performance also marked the house debut of Bulgarian mezzo-soprano Vesselina Kasarova in the role of Romeo. This was originally supposed to be a full scale production, but due to technical difficulties that plan never came to fruition.
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| 21-Sep-2012 The Norwegian Opera and Ballet | Butterfly as flashback: Madama Butterfly at the Norwegian National Opera |
 The Norwegian Opera and Ballet seems to be developing a thing lately for staging Puccini operas as flashbacks and/or dreams. There is Stefan Herheim’s La bohème from last season, telling the story as part dream, part flashback from the viewpoint of Rodoldo. This season’s Puccini, Madama Butterfly, told the story straight forward, but with an added character, the now-grown son of Cio-Cio San and Pinkerton watching his parents’ relationship unfold, reacting from the sidelines.
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| 8-Sep-2012 Oslo Opera House, Main Stage | The Oslo Philharmonic and Jukka-Pekka Saraste play Schubert and Mahler |
 What do Schubert’s Third Symphony and Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde have in common? Not a whole lot, which is why it came across as rather puzzling that the two pieces should be programmed together. Yet, in the Oslo Philharmonic’s September 6 and 8 concerts, they were. The result was a mixed bag of two wildly different works, written almost a century apart.
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| 18-Aug-2012 Oslo Opera House, Main Stage | L'isola disabitata: Not so deserted after all |
 When one thinks of Haydn, opera really isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. It’s the symphonies, the string quartets, even his oratorios you think of first, not his operas. And yet he wrote 15 of them. L’isola disabitata is the eleventh of the bunch, written for the Eszterházy court in 1779, and it was this opera The Norwegian Opera and Ballet (DNO) chose as their 2012/2013 season opener.
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