Nick Hammond
Tosca
Safe Choice for New Music Director
Pierre Audi’s 2014 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, revived in 2016 and again now at the Bastille, is fast becoming a stalwart of the Opéra de Paris’s repertoire, and it is easy to see why: with a set that is … Read More
Héroïnes Romantiques
Dramatizing Life and Death
In our world of conflict, plague, dictatorships and the rise of the far right, it is hard to escape the feeling that things are regressing rather than progressing. However, one discernible area of positive advancement can be found in the … Read More
La Nuit du 12
A Caring Copper
As crazy as it might seem to be going to the movies in the middle of a heatwave in Paris, over two hours spent in an air-conditioned cinema afforded a much-needed respite from temperatures that have been edging above 40 … Read More
‘My Paris’ & ‘Ravel: Concertos pour Piano-Mélodies’
Paris Is Flute. Flute Is Paris
When an album with the title My Paris appeared on the list of newly released classical recordings, I felt it would be rude not to review it for Paris Update. Australian flautist Ana de la Vega, who was inspired by … Read More
Parsifal
A Knightly Cult
I must admit to approaching British director Richard Jones’s production at the Opéra Bastille of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal with some trepidation. Jones’s previous productions of Wagner’s other works, especially the Ring Cycle, have had a tendency to trivialize the most … Read More
Elektra
Hard-Hitting Production of Dark Tale
Richard Strauss’s one-act opera Elektra, the first of his many collaborations with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, is unrelentingly hard-hitting throughout its one hour and 45 minutes. No room or time is given for light relief as the heroine singlemindedly pursues … Read More
The Miser
Comédie Française Discovers the Comedy in Molière
The reopening of Paris theaters has come at just the right time for the Comédie Française, known fondly as La Maison de Molière, as 2022 is the 400th anniversary of the birth of the comic playwright. To mark this major … Read More
Retour à Reims
Book to Film, Left to Right, Key Element Omitted
Cinematic adaptations of books always carry with them multiple challenges. How faithful, for example, should one be to the written text? What should be omitted or added? And how does the film work purely on its own terms, without knowledge … Read More
Molière
To Laugh or To Cry?
Note to readers: To celebrate the 400th anniversary of the birth of the great French playwright Molière, we are republishing this commentary on his work, which first came out in Paris Update on November 18, 2020. A recorded version is … Read More
Paris-Briançon
Night Train
When we are informed at the beginning of Philippe Besson’s new novel, set on the overnight train from Paris to Briançon, that there will be deaths by the time dawn breaks, it would not be a complete surprise to find … Read More