Elektra
Hard-Hitting Production of Dark Tale
Richard Strauss’s one-act opera Elektra, the first of his many collaborations with librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, is unrelentingly hard-hitting throughout its one hour and 45 minutes. No room or time is given for light relief as the heroine singlemindedly pursues … Read More
Œdipe
Live Opera Returns with the Myth of Oedipus
It is always exhilarating to herald the beginning of the operatic season with a new production of a rarely performed work, but when it is the first to be performed at the Opéra National de Paris after a two-year shut-down … Read More
Paris Opera’s Inaugural Concert
Debut of Opera's New Conductor Bodes Well
Gala concerts rarely give a complete sense of how a new conductor is going to fare in the long term, but the early signs of the Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s tenure as music director of the Opéra National de Paris … Read More
Pelléas et Mélisande
Darkness and Light in Music
Recently, in an article on Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, I suggested that the only other 20th-century French opera that will stand the test of time is Claude Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (1902), inspired by Maurice Maeterlink’s symbolist play from … Read More
French Music for the Stage
Theatrical Froth
After the flood of new releases of French chamber music recordings over the last couple of months, it comes as a refreshing change to have a new album of French orchestral music to review. The veteran Estonian conductor Neeme Järvi … Read More
Dialogues des Carmélites
An Unlikely Masterpiece
It is always an intriguing exercise to try to guess which operatic works written in this or the last century will stand the test of time. In the French repertoire, an opera like Olivier Messiaen’s sprawling Saint François d’Assise (1983), … Read More
Un Matin de Printemps
A Trio of Spring Treats
Could it be due to lockdown that so many recordings of French chamber music have been released recently? It is certainly easier and safer to bring a few musicians together, rather than a larger ensemble, especially if all the players … Read More
Gustavo Dudamel
New Maestro for the Paris Opera
In a major coup for the Opéra National de Paris, the Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel was unveiled (almost literally, given the fact that he had to remove a face mask before speaking) this week to the press at the Palais … Read More
French Music by British Artists
Sounds Across the Channel
Poignantly, just as Britain is cutting its ties – and opportunities – with mainland Europe, a number of recordings of French classical music performed by British artists have just been released. British musicians have particular reason to regret the terrible … Read More
Proust, le Concert Retrouvé
A Musical Evening with Marcel Proust
The writer Marcel Proust put on a private concert at the Paris Ritz on July 1, 1907 for a select group of friends and leading lights of Parisian high society. The evening appears to have been not only a musical … Read More