On Stage
Québec: La Damnation de Faust, in an astonishing staging
The Québec Opera Festival has attained a new level of achievement, offering festival attendees a work reputed to be difficult, and which usually does not attract many people to the ...
The Elektra-shock in Aix
The shock begins with the opening chords. The Orchestre de Paris, conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, explodes. Tonight, the violence contained in Strauss’ work is magnified, the orchestra gives its best, ...
San Francisco’s Tales of Hoffman is Right on Target with Natalie Dessay
Let’s be clear right from the start: the joint effort of Barcelona, San Francisco and Lyon, vocally powerful in this production, is right on target. Because quite simply, precise, explicit, ...
Julia Fischer and Vasily Petrenko: phenomenal!
This concert, starring violinist Julia Fischer and conductor Vasily Petrenko tackling two masterpieces of Russian music (namely Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto and Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 4) looked very promising. And indeed, ...
The 2013 edition of the ResMusica Summer Festivals Guide
The 2013 edition of the ResMusica Summer Festivals Guide invites you to discover 10 artists and 30 dance and classical music festivals in France, Europe and North America. The guide opens ...
Festival Classica : Aben-Hamet, resurrection of an impressive score
Théodore Dubois left only a small legacy to future generations of composers. His name has almost entirely disappeared from history and his work takes up very little space in encyclopedias ...
Angelin Preljocaj’s Oriental Nights
In his new ballet, Les Nuits (The Nights), Angelin Preljocaj presents a fantasised erotic vision of the Orient. Inspired by the One Thousand and One Nights, this show is a ...
In Paris, Happy Birthday Sir Gardiner
Oedipus-Rex is a curious work to celebrate a birthday. The opera-oratorio by Stravinsky with a libretto by Jean Cocteau translated into Latin by Cardinal Jean Daniélou (who died in the ...
Last Pollini Perspectives concert in Pleyel : a culmination
It was the last concert in the 2011-2013 Pollini Perspectives series, and the Maestro ended his Beethoven component with the last three sonatas (Pollini will record the complete cycle very soon ...
The Importance of Being Earnest, world premiered on stage in Nancy
The Opéra de Lorraine, honoring its mission as a “national opera”, is acting as a commissioner of new work, it hosting the premiere of the stage version of Gerald Barry’s ...
Milan: The 2013 ICMA gala
This year’s annual gala of the International Classical Music Awards was held at the Milan Auditorium, where the laureates were treated to an enjoyable evening of music. The Symphony Orchestra ...
In Los Angeles, Sensational Timely Debuts by Matos and Tomasson
Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s former production (Chicago, 2001; San Francisco, 2004), very slightly retouched, retains its freshness and all its brilliance here and, in particular, gets right down to essentials. Of course, ...
Love of a young woman by Tamasaburo Bando
Kunqu is an ancient traditional theater, which does qualify as opera as it includes singing and dancing, along with musical accompaniement. This art was born in the fifteenth century and ...
A quality Barber in Saint-Étienne
Alberto Zedda conducting a Rossini opera is always an important event. Even in the most famous of Rossini’s operas, this demonic conductor, together with an orchestra in a state of ...
Folle Journée in Nantes : the exquisite hour of French and Spanish music
This year, the theme was “L’heure exquise,” celebrating French and Spanish music from 1850 to the present. In that context, a great tribute was paid to the golden era of ...
Gergiev kicks off the complete Shostakovich’s symphonies in Paris
Valery Gergiev has returned to the marathon concert format that he first put together for the 2010-2011 season—back then it was for Mahler's complete orchestral works— this time with a ...
Louis Langrée conducts the Berlin Philharmonic
For any conductor, being invited by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for a concert in its own hall, in a subscription concert is always a feat which made you part for ...
Don Quixote rejuvenated
José Montalvo is back as a full-fledged choreographer now that he has left his job as director of the Théâtre de Chaillot and his “partner” Dominique Hervieu. His latest creation, ...
Mariss Jansons makes the Turangalîla-Symphonie his own
If there was ever a concert distinguished by the originality of its program and the quality of its interpreters, it was surely this one. It featured the vast, if not ...
In Montpellier, a tribute to Elliott Carter
When Jean-Paul Scarpitta decided to produce at the Corum of Montpellier the French premiere of What Next? by Elliott Carter, the only work by the American composer for the stage, ...
