Opera Features
Franco Zeffirelli: 'I had this feeling that I was special'Saturday, 15 June 2019
"I am amazed to be still alive. Two hours of medieval torment.” Franco Zeffirelli - who has died at the age of 96 - had spent the day having a lumbar injection to treat a sciatic nerve. You could hear the bafflement in his heavily accented English. Read more... |
First Person: Conductor Maxime Pascal on Stockhausen at the Southbank CentreTuesday, 21 May 2019
Stockhausen stands alongside Monteverdi and Beethoven as a composer who exploded the understanding of his art. Stockhausen deeply changed the relationship between space, time and music; there’s a human, intimate dimension to his composition, and he predicted the future. Read more... |
In the spirit of the composer as innovator: Samir Savant on the London Handel FestivalWednesday, 27 March 2019
This is my third year as festival director of the London Handel Festival, an annual celebration of the life and work of composer George Frideric Handel, which takes place every spring in venues across the capital. Read more... |
'Bringing things to life is what opera is all about': Robert Howarth on a 'Magic Flute' with a differenceFriday, 18 January 2019
I’m here in Leeds at the end of five weeks of quite intense rehearsals for Opera North's new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. Read more... |
Best of 2018: OperaWednesday, 26 December 2018
Outnumbered by four to one: out of the classical/opera team, Alexandra Coghlan, Jessica Duchen, David Benedict and... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Brno: Czech 100th feted through Janáček and SmetanaSaturday, 08 December 2018
Five of Leoš Janáček's 10 operas are staples of the worldwide repertoire. Two I'd never seen on stage, so the slice I chose of the19-day festival devoted to all of them for the second time in the history of Brno, the cultured Moravian capital where he spent most of his life, tended to the rare and local. Read more... |
'I’ve told everyone that it’s a comedy – but will anyone laugh?' Jonathan Dove on his new Marx operaWednesday, 05 December 2018
Marx is having a terrible day. He is supposed to be finishing volume two of Capital but he’s distracted by his lust for the maid, workmen are taking away the furniture, his daughter thinks she’s caught a spy.... and what will his wife say when she discovers he’s taken her silver to the pawnbroker? Where is Engels when Marx needs him most? Read more... |
theartsdesk in Gothenburg - Wagner's gold turns greenThursday, 29 November 2018
Before we hear a note, extras dressed as maintenance staff potter about the stage. They try to erase a scrawled slogan on a wall that reads “Hur allt började”: how it all began. “It” is the story of Wagner’s Ring cycle as presaged in the introductory drama of Das Rheingold, which kicks off the tetralogy. Read more... |
theartsdesk in Stockholm: the Birgit Nilsson Prize unites two great Wagnerian sopranosSaturday, 20 October 2018
Why are great Wagnerian singers the most down-to-earth and collegial in the world of opera? Perhaps you have to be to master and sustain the biggest roles in the business, ones which can't be performed in isolation, and a strong constitution helps, too. Birgit Nilsson, the farmer's daughter born in rural Sweden 100 years ago, had all those qualities and many more. Read more... |
Montserrat Caballé (1933-2018): from Bellini to 'Barcelona'Sunday, 07 October 2018
Her special claim to fame was the most luminous pianissimo in the business, but that often went hand in velvet glove with fabulous breath control and a peerless sense of bel canto line. To know Maria de Montserrat Viviana Concepción Caballé i Folch, born in Barcelona 85 years ago, was clearly to love her. I never did (know her, that is), and I only saw her once, in a 1986 recital at the Edinburgh Festival. Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 10,000 pieces, we're asking for £3.95 per month or £30 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take an annual subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
latest in today
Frank Skinner, Leicester Square Theatre - acid among the cha...
Frank Skinner walks onstage without introduction and a man in the audience gives him a friendly heckle by way of greeting. Skinner is straight on...
CD: Mark Ronson - Late Night Feelings
Producer extraordinaire Mark Ronson has set his sights on soundtracking the summer once again, with his latest collaborative collection of pop...
Cate Haste: Passionate Spirit - The Life of Alma Mahler revi...
Charismatic, full of vital elan to the end, inconsistent, fitfully creative, a casually anti-semitic Conservative Catholic married to two of the...
Reissue CDs Weekly: R.E.M.
In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003 was issued by Warner Bros. in October 2003. Hitting shops in time for Xmas, it...
CD: Willie Nelson – Ride Me Back Home
Willie’s new album opens with the singer calling out to all the tired old horses saved from the knackers and put out to pasture. It’s...
Franco Zeffirelli: 'I had this feeling that I was speci...
"I am amazed to be still alive. Two hours of medieval torment.”...
Diego Maradona review - entertaining but skin-deep
There's something unsatisfying about the fact that Asif Kapadia's new...
Men in Black: International review - lacklustre sequel missi...
The best joke in Men in Black: International happens before the film starts, when the iconic Columbia Pictures lady in a toga whips out a...