| Date and venue | Title | Submitted by |
|---|---|---|
| 16-May-2013 Staatsoper | Andrea Chénier at the Wiener Staatsoper | Snapdragon |
 Love and death are the two basic ingredients of the standard opera plot, and the more tragedy involved from the first to the last, the more likely it is to spur composers to set it to magnificent music. Andrea Chénier is a textbook example of this although it is not anywhere near as popular as La traviata, Carmen or La bohème, and explicably so.Read full review... | ||
| 30-Apr-2013 Staatsoper | Werther at the Wiener Staatsoper | Snapdragon |
 Goethe’s epistolary novel Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (“The Sorrows of Young Werther”) hit the 1774 zeitgeist not only because it brought back emotion to the rather sober Age of Enlightenment, but because the tragic title hero sports a multi-faceted character that lends itself to various interpretations and projections, therefore making it easy to feel sympathy or even partly identify with the young man who kills himself because his beloved Lotte is married to another.Read full review... | ||
| 14-Feb-2013 Staatsoper | Nostalgia for the Italian Fifties: The Vienna Staatsoper's La Cenerentola | Snapdragon |
 What has made Rossini and his librettist Jacopo Ferretti’s take on Cinderella survive on the opera stage for almost 200 years now is not only the universal archetype of the downtrodden girl who is redeemed by Prince Charming, nor its enchanting music: the absence of fairy-tale symbols like the pumpkin carriage and the glass shoe (barefoot ladies would have been too outrageous a sight on an Italian stage of the time) has perhaps also helped to make it timeless, practical to stage, and largely director-proof.
Read full review... | ||
| 16-Jan-2013 Staatsoper | Ponnelle's L'italiana in Algeri with a veteran cast at the Vienna Staatsoper | Snapdragon |
 In a city where the Vienna State Opera ball is considered the climax of the carnival season and where the local news would lend itself to great libretti (were operetta still in fashion), it is not too surprising that music and theatre performances occasionally mirror the headlines. A Vienna Staatsoper revival of L’italiana in Algeri has coincided with the sentencing of a former Austrian minister and MEP following a “cash for laws” scandal.Read full review... | ||
| 29-Dec-2012 Staatsoper | Bechtolf's Ariadne auf Naxos at the Vienna Staatsoper | Snapdragon |
 A new production of Ariadne auf Naxos is a major draw in itself, but a queue for standing room whose end is on the other side of the opera house is news even in Vienna, especially when the performance is not the première, but the fourth in a run of five and also the one that Franz Welser-Möst left to Jeffrey Tate, who has conducted the piece to positive reviews before. But with no rehearsals and a pit full of substitutes, he found himself unfairly challenged by scratchy violins, impure brass and winds, and botched entries from all directions.Read full review... | ||
| 15-Nov-2012 Staatsoper | Gluck's Alceste at the Vienna Staatsoper: Chronicle of a death foretold | Snapdragon |
 Alceste is the short and sombre story of a wife who gives her life to save that of her husband, King Admète of Thessaly, a deed which ultimately convinces the gods to reprieve both of them. Gluck, hoping to avoid the over-decorated vocal style then in vogue, set this plot to unadorned vocal lines to give depth to the underlying emotions. When this work premièred in Vienna in 1767, the reactions were mixed, Leopold Mozart calling it a “requiem”. The opera was not a great success until a thoroughly reworked version with a libretto in French premièred in Paris in 1776.Read full review... | ||
| 22-Oct-2011 Staatsoper | Salome in Vienna | David Karlin |
 When Richard Strauss first wrote Salome, he was unable to get it performed in his home city of Vienna, so shocking was the material with its heavy eroticism and necrophiliac ending (the première was in Dresden). A century on, times are more permissive, and Salome features in the seasons both of Vienna's Volksoper and of the Staatsoper, where we saw it last night.
Read full review... | ||
