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Angelina Jolie (Maria Callas) and Haluk Bilginer (Aristotle Onassis) in Maria. Photo: Pablo Larraín/Netflix © 2024.

Review | Maria is a Complex Cinematic Traversal of Callas’s Last Days

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By on Film, Opera

For fans of the legendary opera diva Maria Callas, it feels like rumours of a major film based on her life have been swirling for years. As with any heavily-invested fan base, knives were flying before anyone had even seen it and there was a hew and cry when Angelina Jolie was announced to star. Finally the wait is over, and though not perfect, Pablo Larrain’s Maria is a compelling, visually-stunning, auteur take on Callas’s final days in Paris.  What immediately stands out is the care taken to replicate Callas’s late 1970s look: outrageous bejeweled capes, appliqued fur coats and…

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Photo: Alice Pennefather/Royal Ballet and Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Royal Ballet and Opera and The Metropolitan Opera Join Forces with New Cinema Collaboration

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By on Dance, Newswire, Opera

For the first time, the Royal Ballet and Opera and The Metropolitan Opera are joining forces for their cinema seasons on their respective home turfs, giving more audiences in both the UK and US the opportunity to see much loved opera and ballet productions from each world-leading company. The first-of-its kind collaboration will increase the reach of each company to hundreds more cinemas in new markets. As a result of this partnership, RBO’s cinema partner Trafalgar Releasing will broadcast The Met’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia to a larger number of screens in the UK than are currently carrying the Met, while Fathom, the Met Opera’s cinema partner in…

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Photo: Tam Photography

Review | Gala Talent: In Search of Vocal Treasures

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By on Concert Reviews, Opera

On Wednesday December 20, Opéra de Montréal presented its Talent Gala, featuring 11 finalists in the company’s annual Atelier lyrique entrance competition. Adrian Rodriguez, Justin Bernard and Wah Keung Chan attended this decisive final for the future careers of these young artists. Here are their impressions. Heidi Duncan, soprano AR: A great all-around talent with a beautiful mastery of her middle voice. – Adrian JB: Solid technique, but lacking the vocal personality that makes her stand out. – Justin Tessa Fackelmann, mezzo-soprano Ready to embark on a full-on operatic career. Her large  lyric mezzo voice effortlessly filled the acoustically challenging…

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Scene from National Theatre Brno’s The Cunning Little Vixen. Photo: Marek Olbrzymek
Kateřina Kněžíková (Vixen) National Theatre Brno’s The Cunning Little Vixen. Photo: Marek Olbrzymek

Review | An Over Full Cunning Little Vixen at Janáček Brno Festival

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By on Concert Reviews, Opera

The 2024 Janáček Brno Festival closed on Nov. 24 with a revival of National Theatre Brno’s 2018 production of Janáček’s 1924 opera, The Cunning Little Vixen. Set in Brno’s historic Dagmar Children’s Home for abandoned children, company artistic director Jiří Heřman’s vision is inventive, but insufficiently focused. Too many competing visual and dramaturgical elements distract from the original story’s life-affirming message.   At the start, we see period photos of the original care home’s functionalist edifice which are echoed in the clean lines and round window of the set. Children are everywhere, running on and off stage pushing wooden animal toys…

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Scene from Antonín Dvořák's Rusalka at the Janáček Theatre. Two women stand in the center and one is holding a glass.
Eliška Gattringerová (Foreign Princess) & Jana Šrejma Kačírková (Rusalka) in Rusalka at Janáček Brno Festival

Review | Rusalka on the verge at Janáček Brno Festival

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By on Concert Reviews, Opera

Years that end in a four have a special significance in the Czech Republic as a cause to celebrate their national musical heritage with a ‘year of Czech music’. The Janáček Brno Festival therefore extended its umbrella this year to include works by other Czech greats like Antonín Dvořák. His opera Rusalka was seen on Nov. 23 in a production by David Radok that premiered earlier this year at the festival’s hometown National Theatre of Brno. This deeply psychological interpretation exchanged the opera’s traditional, fairy tale associations for an adult story centred around problematic relationships.  Czech director Radok, who also…

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Sarah Dufresne (Ophélie). Photo: Vivien Gaumand

Review | Opéra de Montréal: Hamlet or Ophélie’s Triumph

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By on Concert Reviews, Opera, Romantic

On Nov. 16, Opéra de Montréal (OdeM) took up the challenge of presenting a little-known work from the French repertoire for the first time in its recent history. Of the entire production, conductor Jacques Lacombe was the only one to have performed it before. It sure speaks for the rarity of this Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas. But what a discovery, what an abundance of musical themes, what genius of orchestration! Without analysing the score in detail, we can legitimately be enthusiastic about the saxophone solo at the start of Act II, Scene 2, a gesture as astonishing as it is…

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Barbora Perná in the title role of Jenůfa at Janáček Brno Festival. Photo: Marek Olbrzymek

Review | A Divisive Jenůfa at Janáček Brno Festival

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By on Concert Reviews, Opera

Janáček Brno Festival presented a new staging of Janáček’s Jenůfa on Nov. 20 in a co-production with the Moravian Theatre Olomouc where it had its premiere on Nov. 15. Director Veronika Kos Loulová offers a radical take that includes spoken text as well as some surprising tinkering with the score. The result was both stimulating and provocative, raising the ire of audience members who vocalised their disapproval. Ultimately, Loulová and her all-woman team have created a Jenůfa for today that questions tropes around motherhood and familial relationships. The creative team worked in conjunction with the organisation Úsměv mámy (A Mother’s…

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Brno
Dorothea Röschmann as Emilia Marty in Staatsoper Berlin's The Makropulos Case at Janáček Brno Festival. Photo: Marek Olbrzymek

Review | Berlin Staatsoper’s fragmented The Makropulos Case at Janáček Brno Festival

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By on Concert Reviews, Opera

Leoš Janáček’s penultimate opera, The Makropulos Case returned to Brno, where it premiered in 1926, in Claus Guth’s 2022 production from Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden. This was the company’s first appearance at the bi-annual Janáček Brno Festival where it presented two performances (seen Nov. 18) of the opera based on Karel Čapek’s 1922 “comedy” dealing with the complex emotional baggage associated with immortality.  Guth, along with set designer Étienne Plus and costume designer Ursula Kudrna, have chosen a “period” 1920s Art Deco setting that includes a troupe of dancers/movement artists who cater to opera singer Emilia Marty. From the…

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The cast of Falstaff.
Hungarian State Opera's Falstaff. Photo: Valter Berecz/Hungarian State Opera

Review | Fabulous 50s Falstaff at Hungarian State Opera

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By on Concert Reviews, Opera

Verdi’s final opera, his comic masterpiece Falstaff, was revived by Hungarian State Opera on Nov. 16. in Swiss director Arnaud Bernard’s 2013 staging set in the fabulous 1950s. Opening and closing with a freeze frame set within a giant period TV screen, the update perfectly suits the work’s constant plot shifts and intricately-wrought musical ensembles. Despite a slightly misjudged directorial nod that we are watching a show within a show, this tightly-executed revival delivers all the self-mocking humanity of Verdi’s late comedy. The scene opens with Falstaff and his shady henchmen, Dr. Caius (Péter Balczó), Pistola (András Kiss) and Bardolfo…

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Turandot
Scene from Hunagarian State Opera's Turandot. Photo: Valter Berecz / Hungarian State Opera

Review | Intriguingly ambiguous new Turandot at Hungarian State Opera

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By on Concert Reviews, Opera

Puccini’s final opera, Turandot, was famously left incomplete due to the composer’s untimely death. It premiered at Teatro alla Scala in 1926 using composer Franco Alfano’s ending based on fragments of vocal lines and indications for orchestration left by Puccini. Much controversy and critical dissatisfaction has always swirled around the Alfano ending prompting the commissioning of many alternate completions. The most famous of these is Italian composer Luciano Berio’s 2002 rendering which the Hungarian State Opera is currently using in their new production of Turandot, alternating in some performances with Alfano’s more familiar ending. Psychological Turandot As director Dóra Barta indicates…

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