A team of young creators headed by a director sporting a baseball cap; a black performer in drag; extensive use of video: the new production of Tannhäuser in Bayreuth this summer had enough advance buzz to generate pre-opening jitters for another regietheater production expected to provoke and shock the audience. Happily, the director Tobias Kratzer, a winner of the Faust Award for Excellence in German Theater for[...]

Paul Du Quenoy
July 2019

It’s back! For the second time the Metropolitan Opera has revived Robert Lepage’s much loathed production of Wagner’s epic tetralogy, which is famously dominated by a vast mechanical contraption (“the  […]

Nina Krauthamer and Charles Blum
May 2019

The exquisitely renovated Grand Théâtre de Genève opened its doors to three Ring Cycles in Feb.-March 2019. We were fortunately able to attend the third cycle (March 12-March 17, 2019). […]

Stephen Wagley
December 2018

Great singing and convincing acting marked the revival of Keith Warner’s production of the Ring at the Royal Opera House in October. Warner’s conception was generally forceful and intelligent; the […]

Yuval Sharon, the first American to stage a new production at Bayreuth, has created a Lohengrin that is gorgeous and introspective yet very accessible, at least by Bayreuth standards. Focused […]