Matthew Gurewitsch
Irresistible Force, Immoveable Object
From Glyndebourne, Mozart’s Orientalist fantasy The Abduction from the Seraglio
Before Mozart Was Mozart
A Japanese director in Berlin gives the teenage whiz kid’s first operatic hit a dazzling makeover
Cleopatra vs. Caliban
Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller trade off as Frankenstein and the Creature in the National Theatre’s 2011 take on Mary Shelley’s masterpiece
Step-Mama’s Boy
Verdi’s season-opening Don Carlo from the Teatro San Carlo, Naples
Fighting Spirit
For World Opera Day, seven companies join forces to showcase Ukraine’s Golden Crown
Fetch Me Her Slippers
From Frankfurt, Rimsky-Korsakov’s shaggy-dog Christmas Eve, a tranche of tsarist holiday cheer that resembles Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker not at all
And the Award Goes to…
At the 2022 International Opera Awards, Kris Defoort’s The Time of Our Singing wins for best World Premiere
Last Laugh
From the National Theatre, London, a rare revival of George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem
Otello in Athens
Robert Wilson tackles Verdi in the birthplace of tragedy
The Music Man
From the stage of the San Francisco Opera, Jakub Józef Orliński’s Orpheus enchants the Golden Gate
The Man Who Knows Don Giovanni
On the eve of a new production in Turin, master maestro Riccardo Muti unlocks the hero’s secrets
Into the Maelstrom
Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades burns like a fever dream in the hands of Nathalie Stutzman, contralto turned star conductor
Second-Lead Syndrome
Dancing man Tommy Rall steals the screen in MGM’s Kiss Me, Kate
Ahoy for a Shipwreck
In Houston, Louisa Muller directs a long-neglected operatic masterpiece
Danse Macabre
A wicked Rigoletto on the floating stage of Bregenz, Austria
Getting It Right
For the British playwright Alan Bennett, other people’s lives are just the dress rehearsal
The Nuns’ Story
Live from San Francisco, Dialogues of the Carmelites, Poulenc’s gripping chronicle of the French Revolution
Lift Every Voice and Sing
From Heartbeat Opera, a Fidelio for our time
Turning Point
Patrice Chéreau’s “Centennial Ring” at the Bayreuth Festival in 1976 changed history
Incantation
Decaying film stock, the Song of Songs, and the seraphic soprano of Angel Blue
Julius Caesar takes the Big Peach
The Atlanta Opera’s Handel is anything but stuffy
Ancient History
From operas on Nixon, Klinghoffer, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and women of the Gold Rush, John Adams progresses to Shakespeare
The Yellow and the Blue
Led by their American music director Hobart Earle, the Odessa Philharmonic flies Ukraine’s colors in Berlin
London’s 34th Billy Elliot
Caught live at the Victoria Palace Theatre in 2014, Elliott Hanna makes a legendary part his own
