Posts Tagged ‘Kent Nagano’

Earful of Joy for Trump

Friday, June 23rd, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 23, 2017 MUNICH — Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, complete, is slated for President Trump’s second orchestra concert on the job, to take place, like the first, in Europe, specifically at Hamburg’s new Elbphilharmonie. Details of the July 7 event, part of the 12th G20 Summit, were announced Wednesday by a spokesman […]

Read the rest of this article »

Tonhalle Lights Up the Beyond

Friday, January 27th, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: January 27, 2017 ZURICH — It was not the most natural of programs. Beethoven’s familiar C-Major Piano Concerto (1795) prepared nobody for Éclairs sur l’Au-Delà … , or Lightning Over the Beyond … , the 65-minute theological ornithological astronomical would-be symphony Messiaen finished in 1991. Wary of the exotic fare ahead, […]

Read the rest of this article »

Petrenko to Extend in Munich

Friday, July 24th, 2015

By ANDREW POWELL Published: July 24, 2015 MUNICH — Bavarian State Opera has confirmed by phone it will announce a contract extension for Kirill Petrenko before the start of next season, in September. With the month of August being a house holiday, the news could come as early as next week when the company’s annual […]

Read the rest of this article »

Petrenko’s Sharper Boris

Wednesday, March 19th, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: March 19, 2014 MUNICH — Bavarian State Opera’s flag-waving, Putin-skewering production of Boris Godunov had extra resonance in a revival on Sunday afternoon (March 16) as Crimeans engaged in their foregone conclusion of a referendum. Musically, too, all emerged tougher and more urgent than at last year’s premiere. Kirill Petrenko sharpened […]

Read the rest of this article »

Portraits For a Theater

Sunday, October 13th, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 13, 2013 MUNICH — Next Wednesday (Oct. 16) new portraits go on display in Bavarian State Opera’s lobby. Twenty-one new portraits. Astrid Varnay, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Kurt Moll, Brigitte Fassbaender, Lucia Popp, Edita Gruberová, René Kollo, Hildegard Behrens and Waltraud Meier are among the worthy singing subjects, company troopers all. But […]

Read the rest of this article »

Written On Skin, at Length

Saturday, August 24th, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: August 24, 2013 MUNICH — What is written on skin? Craftsmanship “as immaculate as anything … composed since the heyday of Ravel” and “glimpses of a 21st-century tonality,” if you read Alex Ross in The New Yorker. And “a psychologically gripping, emotionally heart-pounding and viscerally satisfying drama,” according to Corinna da […]

Read the rest of this article »

Bieito Hijacks Boris

Thursday, February 21st, 2013

By ANDREW POWELL Published: February 21, 2013 MUNICH — As dramaturgy, Calixto Bieito’s new staging here of Mussorgsky’s seven‑scene 1869 Boris Godunov (heard and seen yesterday, Feb. 20) runs into trouble almost immediately. Set in present‑day Russia — identifiable by the up‑to‑date, thug‑police gear and the wall map in Boris’s Terem (Scene V) — it […]

Read the rest of this article »

Widmann’s Opera Babylon

Friday, November 23rd, 2012

By ANDREW POWELL Published: November 23, 2012 MUNICH — Scorpion-Man prowls the rubble of an unnamed flattened city at the start of Babylon, Jörg Widmann’s new opera, wailing as he moves. We should care. Seven scenes, a Hanging Garden interlude, and three costly theater hours later, he is back, doing his thing over the same […]

Read the rest of this article »

Season of Concessions

Thursday, October 11th, 2012

By ANDREW POWELL Published: October 11, 2012 MUNICH — Arts groups here present a restrained 2012–13 season facing pros and cons not always aligned with those in America. Funding, for instance, holds steady: city and state (Bavaria) play their part, as do local corporations Siemens, BMW, Audi, Allianz and Linde. Excellent pools of musicians, instrumental […]

Read the rest of this article »