I have long been an admirer of conductor Vincent Dumestre and his excellent period-instrument orchestra Le Poème Harmonique. Specializing in French music from the 17th and early 18th centuries, it has staged and recorded seldom-performed music for over 25 years. … Read More
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
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
With the necessary fusion of so many musical and theatrical forces, staging opera can be a hazardous business, as was demonstrated at the second performance of Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski’s new production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s 1934 opera Lady Macbeth of … Read More
