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San Francisco Opera opens the 2024-25 season with a production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball), starring Michael Fabriano as King Gustavus III of Sweden and Lianna Haroutounian as Amelia – on whom the king has set his eye. Gustavus’ trusted adviser, Renato, is sung by baritone Amartuvshin Enkhbat and mezzo-soprano…

Principal guest conductor of the Czech Philharmonic, Jakub Hrůša, leads the Orchestra on a 5-concert tour, taking in performances in Hamburg, the Lucerne Festival, the Rheingau Festival and the BBC Proms. The programme is largely focused on works by Dvořák, with pieces by Suk, Janácek and Vítězslava Kaprálová also featured. The British magazine Gramophone has…

July is traditionally the month in which the celebration of the 1,000 year-old stone theatres of Sicily opens. This Festival of Stone Theatres, directed by Francesco Costa and promoted by the Sicilian Opera Choir, administered by Alberto Munafò Siragusa, takes place each summer, in some of the most beautiful and ancient stone theatres of Sicily,…

The end of July in Monaco heralds a series of Concerts at the Prince’s Palace, and this year the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra has a superb selection on offer, running from 11th July to 4th August. The series opened with a sold-out concert led by American conductor James Gaffigan, General Music Director of Komische Oper Berlin,…

In what must be the highlight of the current season, San Francisco Playhouse stages the Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice hit musical Evita. Winner of 9 Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Score, Evita was described by The Stage as “…. the greatest musical the UK has ever created”. The musical tells of…

It is with great sadness that we note the death, earlier this month, of Éric Vu- An, Artistic Director of Nice Méditerranée Ballet. Éric Vu-An, of Vietnamese origin, was born in Paris in 1964, and at the age of 10, joined the Paris Opéra Ballet School. He became a member of the Paris Opéra corps…

As part of its 2024 Summer Season, San Francisco Opera once more stages George Frideric Handel’s first comic opera, Partenope. Last seen on the stage of the War Memorial Opera House in 2014, this Olivier Award-winning production by Christopher Alden is co-produced by English National Opera and Opera Australia, and led by conductor Christopher Moulds.…

The Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra brings the 2023-24 season to an end with a concert featuring Tchaikovsky’s lovely Variations on a Rococo Theme Op 33 and the Symphony No 5 in B-flat minor by Anton Bruckner. The concert is led by the Orchestra’s Artistic and Musical Director, Kazuki Yamada, who is also Chief Conductor and Artistic…

This evening, San Francisco Opera presents a new staging of Mozart’s The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), led by Music Director Eun Sun Kim. The production stars New Zealand-Samoan tenor Amitai Pati as Tamino, the prince who has to surmount various challenges to be united with Pamina, a role taken by Austrian soprano Christina Gansch. Estonian…

Nice Opera continues its current season with a double bill of Stravinsky’s mythical tale Le Rossignol and Poulenc’s somewhat off-beat Les Mamelles de Tirésias. A co-production with Champs-Elysées Theatre and Oper Köln, this dual staging is led by conductor Lucie Leguay, with direction by Olivier Py.   Igor Stravinsky began work on his opera Le Rossignol in…