A modern opera adaptation by Charles Wuorinen based on Annie Proulx’s short story previously adapted by Ang Lee for the Oscar-winning film Brokeback Mountain. This marks Wuorinen’s return to the opera stage with one of the major works of his career, equally ambitious in its beauty and momentous tragedy. Brokeback is the story of ranch hand Ennis del Mar and rodeo cowboy Jack Twist, two young men who meet and fall in love on the fictional Brokeback Mountain in Wyoming in 1963. Wuorinen says “It’s a story of doomed love, in this case a complex homosexual relationship taking place in a very homophobic society."

A modern opera adaptation by Charles Wuorinen based on Annie Proulx’s short story.

Brokeback Mountain

OperaGlass Works were about to open with a stage production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, conducted by John Wilson, in London just when Lockdown began. They had been rehearsing for 6 weeks and the production was at such an exciting point that they just couldn’t let it go. So they made a film. This is not just live capture. This is a new hybrid form that honours the spirit of the original theatre production but that also embraces the current constraints: the presence of the camera is declared and the intimacy of performing to a live audience is replaced by the singers singing directly into the lens. Shot on location at Wilton’s Music Hall, the extraordinary atmosphere and charm of this mid-nineteenth-century theatre suits the haunting ambiguities of this opera perfectly. The whole space, every corner, not just the stage, is used to tell the story.

OperaGlass Works films their production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, conducted by John Wilson.

The Turn of the Screw

Staatsoper Hamburg and Vincent Boussard’s new staging of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly brings to life the moving tragedy of Japanese geisha Cio-Cio San (Alexia Voulgaridou) in a stylish and sophisticated production. Costumes by Christian Lacroix, set by Vincent Lemaire.

Staatsoper Hamburg and Vincent Boussard’s new staging of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly brings to life the moving tragedy of Japanese geisha Cio-Cio San

Madama Butterfly

Puccini’s Japanese tragedy Madama Butterfly is given a ravishing production by The Royal Opera. 
Its alluring imagery of Japan from the 19th-century European Imagination heightens the intense clash of East and West. When the American naval officer Pinkerton seduces the young ‘Butterfly’ Cio-Cio-San, he seems to promise every happiness – but his cruel abandonment leads to her tragic self-sacrifice.
Antonio Pappano, Music Director of The Royal Opera and renowned for his interpretations of Puccini, conducts an exceptionally fine cast with the Royal Opera Chorus and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House.

Powerful performances show why Madama Butterfly remains one of the all-time operatic favorites.

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly is one of the best-known operas worldwide. The ROH stages this alluring Japanese tragedy, reminding us why it’s a favorite.

The ‘sheer visual sophistication’ of Annabel Arden’s Barbiere serves ‘a triumphant celebration of Rossini’s musical genius’, featuring de Niese’s ‘powerfully sung’ Rosina, Bürger’s ‘gale-force’ Figaro and Stayton’s ‘pure and mellifluous’ Almaviva – a leading trio ‘musically and dramatically beyond compare’ ( The Independent). Contributing to the ‘ensemble precision’, the rest of the cast includes a ‘scene-stealing’ Berta in Kelly, a ‘suavely unctuous’ Basilio from Stamboglis andCorbelli’s Bartolo, ‘an object lesson in comic understatement’ (The Guardian). With Enrique Mazzola at the helm of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, ‘the score bubbles along on a Puckish current of merry mischief’ (The Telegraph).

The ‘sheer visual sophistication’ of Annabel Arden’s Barbiere serves ‘a triumphant celebration of Rossini’s musical genius

The Barber of Seville

Mozart’s masterpiece conducted by Giovanni Antonini on stage at La Scala with Michael Hampe’s staging.

Così Fan Tutte

Lacrosse sticks and flying bicycles bring contemporary chic to this timeless fantasy of warriors and witches in Robert Carsen’s fun-filled transformation of Handel’s first London triumph. Conducting from the keyboard just as Handel himself did, Ottavio Dantone leads a youthful cast of today’s luminaries in the dramatic art of Baroque opera; the ‘affecting’ Sonia Prina, the ‘unadorned intensity’ of Anett Fritsch and ‘fire-breathing flair’ (The Observer) of Brenda Rae.

Lacrosse sticks and flying bicycles bring contemporary chic to this fantasy of warriors and witches in this fun-filled version of Handel’s opera.

Rinaldo

A deeply moving production of the traditional double-bill Pagliacci and Cavalleria Rusticana is shown here at Milan's Teatro alla Scala.

Cavalleria Rusticana

Forbidden love, wrongdoings and anguish: the Opernhaus Zürich ventures into late 19th-century French romanticism with “Werther“ by French composer Jules Massenet. A loose adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s epistolary novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, the opera is conducted by Germany’s Cornelius Meister. It tells the story of the impossible union of poet Werther to Charlotte, a woman of duty already promised to a wealthy businessman.Goethe’s drama is echoed in Massenet’s score by emotionally wide-ranging vocal parts written on a grand scale.

A loose adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s epistolary novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, composed by Jules Massenet. 

Werther

Recommendations

Glyndebourne’s wartime history as a home for evacuee children is the ingenious context for a new production of this unclassifiable entertainment in which low comedy and high tragedy compete for our attention, ‘borne aloft by Strauss’s divine music and Hofmannsthal’s visionary poetry’. At the centre of this production from Katharina Thoma is the noble, tragic figure of the abandoned Ariadne herself, in a haunting performance from Soile Isokoski, ‘with brilliant support from the pit’ (The Independent).

Glyndebourne’s wartime history as a home for evacuee children is the ingenious context for a new production of this unclassifiable tale.

Ariadne auf Naxos

Glyndebourne

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