After years of writing tragedies, Verdi in his old age turned to the majestic girth of Shakespeare’s debauched knight, Sir John Falstaff, for inspiration in what would be his final opera. Conductor James Levine, who returns to the Met Opera after two years of illness, believes it is the greatest comic opera of all –…
The Nose. It must be the most unromantic title for an opera, or a story for that matter, because Shostakovich’s opera started out as a short story by Gogol. It’s an unromantic opera. But it’s clever and crazy and utterly zany. This Russian classic is essentially the magic of making comedy out of absolutely nothing.…
Pushkin’s famous novel was translated by Tchaikovsky into soaring emotions in his opera Eugene Onegin, and this production in the hands of Russian conductor Valery Gergiev and Russian soprano Anna Netrebko is pure magic. Netrebko’s letter scene in Scene 2 alone is worth the price of the admission, as the young Tatiana pours out the…
London Letter 