The French have belatedly fallen in love with a foreigner: the American musical. Paris’s Théâtre du Châtelet has been specializing in the genre (although that may change under its new directors, Ruth Mackenzie and Thomas Lorio Di Prevot), and the brand … Read More
Two very different operas, written less than half a century apart, were staged on successive evenings at the Opéra Bastille last week. The operas of Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) are all too rarely performed outside of Eastern Europe, so … Read More
What happens when a resented ex-lover turns up at a reunion of three old friends in a country house in Ireland and a kindly neighbor is unexpectedly thrown into the mix? In Christophe Garros’s new play, Cold Water, it turns … Read More
Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin, currently on stage at the Bastille Opera, is an extraordinary thing. Written in 1850, when the composer was still in his 30s, it marks the end of what one might call the trio of his youthful operas … Read More
I must admit to a longstanding prejudice against the music of Giacomo Puccini. For me, the music and action of an opera should form a cohesive whole, but in Puccini’s case, the melodies are too frothily beautiful for their own … Read More
Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, which has just opened at the Bastille Opera House in Paris in a production shared with the Salzburg Festival, feels like a regression in so many ways. After the visceral violence of Strauss’s first two operas, … Read More
Two epic events in world history occurred in Europe one century ago: the Easter Rising in Dublin and the Battle of the Somme. On May 5, 6 and 7, Cinémorphe, Paris’s first immersive theater company, will present “192016: Unto the … Read More
Racine’s play Bajazet, first performed in 1642, differs from the 10 other tragedies he wrote in one major respect. Whereas all the other plays are set in a distant timeframe – in ancient Greece or Rome, or in ancient biblical … Read More
Theater actors are not generally a self-effacing bunch. Dreams of having their names up in lights must be a powerful motivating factor. Indeed, many theaters, even on tour in the provinces, usually need a lead actor known from television or … Read More
