Wagner’s groundbreaking, metaphysical romance Tristan und Isolde returned to the Metropolitan Opera on March 9 for the first time in ten years in a bold new production featuring Lise Davidsen, opera’s current “it” girl. While the promotion focused mainly on Davidsen and Michael Spyres and on the Met directing debut of Yuval Sharon, the rewards came from the efforts of the strong cast, the superb orchestra,[...]
The Philadelphia Orchestra’s full-length concert performances of Tristan und Isolde on June 1 and 8 marked several milestones in the contemporary opera scene: the first time Yannick Nézet-Séguin had conducted the full score […]
How Mahler would have loved the Met Orchestra! It played with such presence, such enormous expressivity, clarity and strength that all the extremes Mahler inserted into his hard-won Fifth Symphony […]
Lohengrin returned to the Met on February 26 for the first time since 2006 in a new production by François Girard. After Robert Wilson’s starkly abstract 1998 production, the Canadian […]