Lohengrin
Wagner at War
The first night of Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s Paris Opera début at the Bastille was destined to be a sensational event. Serebrennikov, who has always been outspoken in his home country over such issues as LGBTQ rights (he is openly … Read More
Tristan und Isolde
Visual and Sonic Glories
The famous Paris Opera production of Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde by director Peter Sellars, in collaboration with video artist Bill Viola, makes another welcome return to the Bastille. There is a reason why this production has remained in the … Read More
MeanWeill: Berlin to Broadway (via Paris)
The Gritty, Bittersweet World of Weill
One of the joys of Paris is how often unexpected performances pop up in unlikely locations. I had been to La Cave Café in the 18th arrondissement before, but I imagined that the bar’s name (“cave” means “cellar”) hinted only at huge … Read More
Tosca
Safe Choice for New Music Director
Pierre Audi’s 2014 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca, revived in 2016 and again now at the Bastille, is fast becoming a stalwart of the Opéra de Paris’s repertoire, and it is easy to see why: with a set that is … Read More
‘My Paris’ & ‘Ravel: Concertos pour Piano-Mélodies’
Paris Is Flute. Flute Is Paris
When an album with the title My Paris appeared on the list of newly released classical recordings, I felt it would be rude not to review it for Paris Update. Australian flautist Ana de la Vega, who was inspired by … Read More
Parsifal
A Knightly Cult
I must admit to approaching British director Richard Jones’s production at the Opéra Bastille of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal with some trepidation. Jones’s previous productions of Wagner’s other works, especially the Ring Cycle, have had a tendency to trivialize the most … Read More
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