Musical America Blogs

By ANDREW POWELL Published: July 4, 2017 OBERAMMERGAU — Amplification makes it possible; amplification limits the achievement. That is the dilemma for opera in this neat Bavarian town’s Passionstheater (1930), built to service a post-plague pledge made 384 years ago. Raked seating in the barn-like house confronts a fixed templar structure on a stage open […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: August 19, 2016 BAYREUTH — Clouds over Europe’s festivals this summer are as figurative as they are literal. The trouble is not lower standards or Regietheater, or even money, but has to do with Europe itself and macabre shifts that are gradually threatening the way of life accepted since 1945. Last […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: August 7, 2016 MUNICH — Two evenings after an “Allahu Akbar” eruption here cost nine mostly teenage, mostly Muslim, lives, it felt perverse to indulge in 280-year-old French escapism stretching to Turkey, Peru, Iran and the future United States. But there we were July 24 in the Prinz-Regenten-Theater for Bavarian State […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: July 17, 2016 MUNICH — When Anja Harteros was singing her first Toscas three seasons ago, it was clear she had the vocal resources for the role, and the Mediterranean temperament. Even so, the portrayal didn’t quite compute. Enter Bryn Terfel, a Scarpia to rattle the aloofest, longest-legged of prima donnas. […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 11, 2016 SEESHAUPT — The men from Lódź, Zagań, Poznań and Warszawa who make up the Meccore Quartet bring phenomenal energy to their work. So goes their reputation, and so it was last Thursday (June 9) here in the Alte Post’s Festsaal on the south shore of Lake Starnberg. Energy, […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: May 17, 2016 MUNICH — Beckmesser blew his brains out at the end of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg last night here in the Nationaltheater. That was after first aiming his gun at the back of the head of Sachs, and after a graphically brutal beating by David and bat-wielding apprentices had […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: September 30, 2015 MUNICH — Bavarian State Opera’s irredeemably banal 2009 Aida has been spiffed up and its awkward action scheme apparently restudied for a fall run here. Even so, the honors at Monday’s performance (Sept. 28) belonged firmly with the musicians, instrumental and vocal. Mannheim-based conductor Dan Ettinger exerted a […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: September 23, 2015 MUNICH — Post is under revision. Still image from video © Bayerische Staatsoper Related posts: Nitrates In the Canapés Muti the Publisher Honeck Honors Strauss Kušej Saps Verdi’s Forza Time for Schwetzingen

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 29, 2015 MUNICH — Noisy and sustained boos fell upon stage director Christiane Pohle and her team after Pelléas et Mélisande last night here in the Prinz-Regenten-Theater. Though not uncommon in this epoch of Regietheater, the intensity of the scorn for Bavarian State Opera’s new production was alarming coming from […]

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 6, 2015 MUNICH — After the genetic mismatch of Kirill Petrenko and Gaetano Donizetti here, it was a relief to watch the conductor easily navigate and ignite the tone rows of Lulu last week (May 25 and 29) at the National Theater. Happily he did so using Cerha’s reconstitution of […]