Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s opera Médée (called a tragédie lyrique) has had a lot of waiting to do. The dramatist Pierre Corneille wrote his version of the Medea myth as early as 1634, at the beginning of his career. Thomas Corneille, 19 … Read More
The first night of Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s Paris Opera début at the Bastille was destined to be a sensational event. Serebrennikov, who has always been outspoken in his home country over such issues as LGBTQ rights (he is openly … Read More
The famous Paris Opera production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde by director Peter Sellars, in collaboration with video artist Bill Viola, makes another welcome return to the Bastille. There is a reason why this production has remained in the … Read More
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
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
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
It is always exhilarating to herald the beginning of the operatic season with a new production of a rarely performed work, but when it is the first to be performed at the Opéra National de Paris after a two-year shut-down … Read More
Gala concerts rarely give a complete sense of how a new conductor is going to fare in the long term, but the early signs of the Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s tenure as music director of the Opéra National de Paris … Read More
In a major coup for the Opéra National de Paris, the Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel was unveiled (almost literally, given the fact that he had to remove a face mask before speaking) this week to the press at the Palais … Read More
Paris has a close connection with Verdi’s most ambitious and – in the five-act version now at the Bastille Opera – longest work. A French-language version of Don Carlo was first performed in the city in March 1867, with an … Read More
