The New Season Unfolds
The beginning of September is always an exciting time. So much is new. It heralds the approach of Autumn, but with the newness and promise we normally associate with Springtime. It is a time of great expectations after the drought of Summer, not that drought can be considered a dominating feature of these past two [...]
Festival Time Again
And now the Viennese opera houses are dark, resting and renewing their energies after ten months of almost non-stop performance. By any standards, it has been a very successful season for the three big houses. The State Opera has been under the closest scrutiny, as it completes its first year under the new directorship. This [...]
And Now, the Rush for Tickets
June is always a particularly interesting month in the Viennese opera calendar. The season is drawing to a close, the long summer break only a few weeks away. It is a retrospective time in which the three main opera houses take stock of the season drawing to a close. At the same time we are [...]
A Camillia Named ‘Anna’
I had to move house in March. I suppose that I should be in therapy but that prospect seems worse than moving house. My bijou bungalow and garden and the schloss park in which they are situated are going under the hammer with the tag “vacant possession of the entire”. So the move was inevitable. [...]
Rossini, Mozart and Britten
One of the great attractions of opera is its diversity. Operas can be very long, seriously heavy – even dunkel – and challenging in various ways, but at the other end of the spectrum they can be bright, breezy, cheerful and comical entertainment, and no less significant for being so. The last performance this season [...]
Thoughts of Spring: An Encore at the Staatsoper
As we begin the second half of the season we can look back at the first half with great satisfaction at a large number of outstanding productions and performances. If I had to choose just one opera a month I would begin with Handel’s Semele at Theater an der Wien for September. October was Donizetti’s [...]
Opera houses, Dame Joan Sutherland: OM, AC, DBE and Rigoletto
Opera brought me to two very different houses in the past few weeks. The first was the new 700-seater theatre which proudly houses the Wexford Festival Opera, famed for its rare pieces and introducing exceptional young talent – many of whom have been later acclaimed on the great stages of the world, including those here [...]
The Legendary Edita Gruberova – Plus: Hindemith, Haydn and Richard Strauss
Now that the clocks have gone back and darkness descends ever earlier, it’s cheering to know that a feast of opera awaits us in all four opera houses in Vienna. Just a small number of those scheduled for November can be found in the Events pages. Not that October wasn’t festive or exciting. There were [...]
New seasons, new hands
Now that the new season is firmly established in Vienna’s four opera houses, the risk of the ODS affliction has disappeared. Usually occurring during the months of July and August, it can be a very stressful and unpleasant experience but effective relief is available, althought sometimes at considerable distance and expense, such as in Salzburg [...]
