Posts Tagged ‘Münchner Opernfestspiele’

Plácido Premium

Tuesday, May 2nd, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: May 2, 2017 MUNICH — Like the miracle of compound interest, Bavarian State Opera’s pricing can chart smartly upwards when you’re not watching. The company sells using an astounding total of 128 price points — the product of eight price categories for its National Theater home and sixteen sliding scales. Things […]

Read the rest of this article »

Staatsoper Favors Local Fans

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2017

By ANDREW POWELL Published: February 22, 2017 MUNICH — Bavarian State Opera had a delicate problem. It was selling too many tickets online, more with each passing season. Its system, powered by CTS Eventim, was so robust and so fast that little was left to sell via phone or in person minutes after the 10 […]

Read the rest of this article »

Bolton Saves Rameau’s Indes

Sunday, August 7th, 2016

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 […]

Read the rest of this article »

Harteros Warms to Tosca

Sunday, July 17th, 2016

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. […]

Read the rest of this article »

Guillaume Tells

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015

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

Read the rest of this article »

Mélisande as Hotel Clerk

Monday, June 29th, 2015

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 […]

Read the rest of this article »

Festive Sides

Friday, August 29th, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: August 29, 2014 MUNICH — Staged works and the legendary Lied evenings hold the limelight here at the annual Opernfestspiele, begun 139 years ago. But veins of chamber music and, since 2008, choral programming run through the five-week schedule, lending scope and affirming organizer Bayerische Staatsoper’s depth of musicianship. The chamber […]

Read the rest of this article »

Blacher Channels Maupassant

Monday, July 7th, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: July 7, 2014 MUNICH — It was standing room only for Die Flut yesterday (July 6). Not only was Boris Blacher’s 1946 radio opera sold out, but the audience was expected to stand or stroll through it, as directed by Aernout Mik at a former riding hall here. Improbably part of […]

Read the rest of this article »

Verdi’s Lady Netrebko

Saturday, June 28th, 2014

By ANDREW POWELL Published: June 28, 2014 MUNICH — Verdi’s Macbeth is back, for its eighth run in six years at Bavarian State Opera, this time to open the dressy Opernfestspiele. The production’s giant chandelier, plastic sheeting, silly tent and field of skulls are now globally familiar, even if they don’t exactly transport us to […]

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 »