Mozart - Die Zauberflöte (Aix-en-Provence, 2026)

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Die Zauberflöte (Aix-en-Provence, 2026)

Festival d'Aix-en Prevence, 2026

Leonardo García Alarcón, Clément Cogitore, Ying Fang, Mauro Peter, Sabine Devieilhe, Sean Michael Plumb, Brindley Sherratt, Edwin Crossley-Mercer, Alix Le Saux, Ashley Dixon, Adriana Bignagni Lesca, Emma Fekete, Rodolphe Briand, Damien Pass, Jonghyun Park, Yvon Moltzen, Jakob Geppert, Cléo Lou Straka, Zoé Höche

ARTE Concert - 21st July 2026

It's amazing - I think so anyway - how a great work of operatic art can be continually refreshed and revitalised hundreds of years after its creation, always having something new to tell us about our own times. That's the measure of great art of course and a great artform. Indeed there are few works in opera as enduring, as complete and unchallengingly brilliant as Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (although I can think of several other Mozart operas alone that fit that description). It's amazing how this can be achieved also with a minimal lightness of musical and directorial touch and without compromising the original mood and intent of the work. With a background in filmmaking, French director Clément Cogitore, sets out his stall for this production at the 2026 Aix-en-Provence Festival with simple grainy old movie footage, placing you in the world this particular Zauberflöte is going to inhabit, work its magic and share all its warmth, wisdom and love for humanity.

It's a historical period, but the implications and the human resonance of the WWII period chosen are not difficult to see applying to the contemporary world situation around us today. The opening footage is of people emerging out of the ruins of Berlin in the aftermath of the Second World War, the characters on the stage extending this out into the theatre and seeming to bring the audience into it, stepping back into time and really feeling like you are there in the midst of it. The focus is on clearing up and rebuilding, particularly from the perspective of the need to provide instruction and guidance to the children who have been left with a destroyed present and an unpromising future.

It's a thoughtful response to Mozart's opera on the part of the director, who by placing it in this setting captures the character emerging from an age of darkness much more effectively than the more typical magical fantasy setting ever manages to achieve. More than just delving deeper, Cogitore also attempts to widen the journey that Tamino and Pamina take to dig their way out of this bleak world by using children to stand in for the tenor and soprano singers as they pass through childhood and adolescence before the singers take over as young adults. There's a minor concern that the production might lose some of the 'magic' of The Magic Flute - and it has to be said that there is certainly less comedy playing in this version - but Die Zauberflöte is an opera of many dimensions, moods and colours and it can be instructive to focus on other aspects.

Cogitore's focus is indeed on the 'instructive' side of the opera. In Act I, Tamino is a child, struggling to survive amid the rubble and ruins; as is Papageno, doing what he can to get by with the meagre opportunities for finding food. The three ladies are dressed like those seen in the historical footage clearing bricks from the ruins, doing what they can to restore order and purpose, educating the children, providing food and providing protection from Tamino's terrifying dreams of snakes, setting the young boy a challenge to bring hope and a sense of purpose. The spoken dialogue is slightly adapted to the post-war situation in this way without changing the tone and intent of the original. It also brings a human element to the work. Not mythical figures, but people who have suffered real hardships and fears.

Further footage underlines the sense of purpose, the three boys a supportive gang of Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns. Pamina meanwhile is in great danger on the streets of New York, encountering or trying to keep out of the clutches of Monostatos as a New York policeman or security guard. Her mother, the Queen of the Night is indeed just a mother who has lost her daughter to the promise of the bright lights of the city, with all the concerns that brings. And of course, with Tamino and Pamina starting out in this way as young children, it brings greater emphasis on the dangers they face as they make a necessary journey to rebuild a new world shaped by a fresh new outlook, not to be subject to the old ways of ancient orders and ancient enmities. Which in this case means a path that is not pre-determined by either the Queen of the Night or Sarastro.

There is a natural shift that takes place in Act II and the director gives the opening dialogue before 'O Isis und Osiris' time to make its point and establish where we are in the next stage in Tamino and Pamina's journey, the young children now adolescents. Reflecting the dress of Monostatos as a New York officer of the peace - a corrupt one - in Act I, we now find ourselves in what looks like a booming post-war Golden Age of Capitalism of the 1940s into the 1950s. Sarastro is the blind president of a large company, taking questions from his 'shareholders' on the suitability of the new junior executive protégé he has in mind to presumably take over the running of the company. Or something along those lines. The 'company' seems to be involved in scientific research of a dubious nature and the outcome of the 'recruitment process' is a little more ambiguous than usual at the conclusion.

The production certainly puts a different complexion on the opera's central conflict of enlightenment versus obscurantism, reason versus superstition, peace over aggression, but ends up coming to the same conclusion that a new generation can (or needs to) learn from the conflicts and failings of the previous generation and lead humanity "in joy and peace towards a better world". It's an optimistic view inspired by the Age of Enlightenment that hasn't quite come to fruition: if we have undoubtedly made some progress there have been huge steps backward as well. The projections of the brave new world of the post-war boom USA does reflect the ambiguity of this and make its failings recognisable, although perhaps wisely the production team avoid the rather negative portrayal of the dark skinned Monostatos as a reflection of race issues in the USA.

Under the musical direction of Leonardo García Alarcón - whose background is more in early baroque opera - the overture takes off at full tilt, but thereafter is filled with all the warmth, optimism, character and beauty of the music. I mean, The Magic Flute really is a thing of almost transcendent beauty and if you can get a stage production to reflect that and maybe even find new aspects to highlight, so much the better, but it's no doubt difficult to reconcile all the contrasts and tones. There is less of a comic element here certainly, fewer of Papageno's antics; that character is still there but Cogitore chooses to focus on other human characteristics that are deemed more important to highlight at the present time. What is important is that nothing in the work is taken for granted, as routine or going through motions, but rather honing in on the emotional undercurrents and reflecting on what charges and transforms them into actions.

Sadly, Tamino's nature as a model to aspire to still remains elusive. Cogitore in an interview for the Aix production admits as much and confirms that is the main reason for the choice of showing him starting out as a child and learning from the ways of the world. Mauro Peter's task is complicated somewhat then by having to let young actors act out two-thirds of the opera, and while sounding fine, doesn't succeed in imbuing Tamino with any more personality. The same challenge faced Ying Fang, who was nonetheless a superb Pamina, striving to make a connection with her 'avatar'. Her 'Ach, ich fühl's' demonstrated the richness of her voice and the emotional charge behind it. Papageno was intentionally underplayed by Sean Michael Plumb, but sung well. If that sound like the singing was lacking, it's not the case. Often, not always but often, Tamino and Pamina are rather lacking in character and tend to be overshadowed by the other larger than life figures. Not so here, where I feel the balance better distributed.

By the same token, despite their characters' blaze and bluster neither Königen der Nacht nor Sarastro dominated. Sabine Devieilhe doesn't have the heft of a typical Queen of the Night and is lighter of voice but more than capable for the challenges of the role and the all-important interpretation of character. Sarastro's booming character likewise was suitably adjusted by Brindley Sherratt and the director, depicted as blind (to the future?) rather than authoritarian. I'm not sure it quite reconciles or finds a path between the darkness and the light - Robert Carsen did that best for my money in Paris in 2014 - but then The Magic Flute should always be a reflection of where we lie on that path today and the period chosen here does force us to view the world now on the edge of great change (if not destruction) and consider who we chose to lead us through it.

External links: ARTE Concert, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, La Scène Numérique du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Strauss - Die Frau ohne Schatten (Aix-en-Provence, 2026)

Richard Strauss - Die Frau ohne Schatten

Festival d'Aix-en Provence, 2026

Klaus Mäkelä, Barrie Kosky, Michael Spyres, Vida Miknevičiūtė, Nina Stemme, Brian Mulligan, Ambur Braid, Jean-Sébastien Bou, Tomasz Kumięga, Daniel Miroslaw, Robert Lewis, Ella Taylor, Héloïse Mas, Laurence Pouderoux, Eugénie Lefebvre, Laura Jarrell

ARTE Concert - 9th July 2026

Die Frau ohne Schatten is one of the most darkly enigmatic of all opera works, shrouded in ominous metaphors with uncommon mythical imagery and obscure meaning. Composed between 1914 and 1917, it's above all a product of its time, Richard Strauss and his librettist, the poet Hugo von Hofmannstahl, grappling with the industrialisation of war and a time of social upheaval; dealing with a modern era of new philosophical thinking and artistic expression in their Viennese society and trying to find a new way of expressing all that in theatrical and musical terms. 

Restaging the opera and working out how much to adhere to its original stage directions in order to retain the underlying purpose of the work is up for grabs and evidently it inspires many impressive interpretations and re-imaginings. Above all of course the work has a tremendous inner power of its own that never fails to put across. Giving the work to a director like Barrie Kosky to direct at the Aix-en-Provence Festival is therefore an intriguing proposition.

Behind all the fairy tale imagery and obscure symbolism there is at least one clear theme that runs through the work. The Woman without a Shadow is clearly stated as a metaphor for the infertility of the Empress, who since she is unable to conceive a child, her husband the Emperor will turn into stone. Christof Loy’s astonishing "literal" 2011 Salzburg Festival reproduction of the 1955 Vienna recording of this opera by Karl Böhm managed managed to tease out a deeply moving reflection on all the unborn children of those who died in the war. Or as the Aix programme notes succinctly describe the theme of the opera in a wider context, it's a question of "what is the essence of humanity and why should it be perpetuated?"

It's also notable of course that there is a clear distinction drawn between the Emperor of a mythical realm's desire for a successor and the human world of Barak the Dyer and his wife's choice to bring children into the world under rather more difficult conditions. The work captures the human tenderness in the pain of living for both these couples and Strauss’s music gets to the heart of it with beautiful lyricism and with the emotional and psychological depth that Hofmannstahl pours imaginatively into the fable. The other interpretation - or an additional one on top of that one - is that the shadow represents the conscience and the danger of those who act and rule without the basic human quality of having a conscience. But essentially whichever way you look at it, it's about defining humanity and its potential for turning towards destruction and self-destruction and the consequences of which are made quite clear at the end of the second Act.

The opening of the third Act III consequently hits hard, all the more so in this production due to the exceptional singing of Brian Mulligan as Barak and Ambur Braid as his wife. Kosky however gives them the ideal platform: a completely white box, the lighting such indeed that there is almost no trace of any shadows (it's the first time I've ever seen Die Frau ohne Schatten where the stage lighting does actually make the shadows disappear); just the hint of reflection but no shadow. Husband and wife wander in space, blind to each other, the effect almost overwhelming as the intent of this elaborately arranged and conceived work it is indeed supposed to be. The subsequent scene between the Empress and the Nurse in the subsequent scene in the box no less effective, again the singing expressing everything, Vida Miknevičiūtė as the Empress in particular ability stunning in her delivery, the killing of her nurse played by Nina Stemme coming as quite a shock on top of that. In a work filled with symbolism like this, the director is free to let their own imagination run riot to serve the imagery and intent and Kosky obliges right up to a suitably enigmatic ending.

The work contains all the ingredients to impress and touch deeply. There is a contrast and dynamic between the two worlds that is brought out as much by the singing as the score and libretto, making it feel vital, real and alive. As noted above, both Vida Miknevičiūtė and Canadian soprano Ambur Braid are both superb here. Typically for Strauss the vocal challenges are considerable for the female roles, but the emotional journey is also critical and both handle it impressively. Brian Mulligan as Barak is also outstanding, looking and sounding like he is having a deep crisis and emotional breakdown at times, but his singing is assured and controlled. Once an Empress herself, Nina Stemme's experience with this opera brings additional depth to the role of the Nurse and she still sings and performs to a very high standard. There really is not other standard in this opera that will do in this opera for any of the main roles. Michael Spyres has recently been taking on heavier roles like this and his voice, a little deeper now, is ideal and as golden as ever, but doesn't seem to establish a sense of character or even real menace as the Emperor.

With voices of that quality to work with, Barrie Kosky likewise tones down his usual excesses when presented with an opera of rich excess. Can you do a minimalist Die Frau ohne Schatten? Would you even want to? Would you ever expect Barrie Kosky to deliver a minimalist production? And yet, the director finds the right balance here, seeking to delve deeper into the meaning and the human above the spectacle and glamour, allowing flashes of wonder at the dream of other possibilities in a world yet to be born, but making sure that the reality always intrudes. The music does exactly the same. There is a distinction between the grubby ramshackle tower of the Dyer and the sterile, cold and lifeless world of the Emperor. Sterile and lifeless provide the appropriate imagery that works much better here rather than place of magical fantasy and wonder. The fantastical touches when they are used - a giant rocking chair with blades for rockers, the headless messengers of Keikobad, and a glittering golden dancer - are original and strikingly effective.

While individual scenes are impressive, well imagined, visually effective and sung and acted as well as they can be, the challenges of bringing it all into a coherent drama remain. Does Die Frau ohne Schatten really have any deeper meaning, or is it enough to be a broad meditation on birth and existence? There are many other little observations and truths broached here, but it's difficult to see them adding up to something greater. Perhaps it's the fact that it can't be easily pinned down that makes it a great work, one that allows new teams to bring a new vision and new ideas. What is clear is that this production is a fabulous account of an endlessly fascinating opera, and you can't complain about that. With Klaus Mäkelä taking on a considerable challenge for his first new opera production for Aix-en-Provence, the score is explored across its whole range of expression and never less than overwhelming on a deep emotional level. Rather than seek to illuminate or explain its mysteries, Kosky and Mäkelä suggest that Die Frau ohne Schatten is perhaps simpler in its meaning and message than the elaborate scenario suggests.

External links: ARTE Concert, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, La Scène Numérique du Festival d'Aix-en-Provence

Wagner - Rienzi (Bayreuth, 2026)

Richard Wagner - Rienzi (Bayreuth, 2026)

Bayreuther Festspiele, 2026

Nathalie Stutzmann, Alexandra Szemerédy, Magdolna Parditka, Andreas Schager, Gabriela Scherer, Andreas Bauer Kanabas, Jennifer Holloway, Michael Nagy, Vitalij Kowaljow, Matthias Stier, Michael Kupfer-Radecky, Victoria Randem

BR-Klassik Livestream - 26th July 2026

First performed in 1842, Wagner's first serious opera Rienzi, der letzte der Tribunen had never been performed before at the composer's theatre at Bayreuth. A five-act epic in the grand opera tradition, it was soon disavowed by the composer and never accepted as part of the Bayreuth canon. It has been performed infrequently elsewhere, but it is a challenge, the opera carrying a lot of historical baggage and notoriety as an opera that celebrates fascism and its association with the Third Reich. The idea that an opera can be fascist is clearly nonsense of course - it's all about how you choose to represent the rise and fall of a dictator on the stage. Some might choose to confront this legacy but another approach - surely equally as valid if it has any meaning or relevance at all (the jury may still be out on that one) - is to see the opera not defined by history, but what it means today.

The Bayreuth Festival has not been afraid to confront Wagner's history and some of the controversial elements in his works, but it has tended to shy away from making any overly political statements in recent years. Stefan Herheim's Parsifal at Bayreuth however viewed the composer's last great work in the context of German history, while the most recent challenge to the composer's legacy was Barry Kosky putting Wagner's antisemitism on trial in the 2017 Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Having never been performed before at Bayreuth however, the pressure on the directors to find a way of presenting this troublesome work are undoubtedly considerable, but just as important is validating the staging of the Rienzi at Bayreuth in its 150th anniversary year is also to come up with a meaningful approach that will address the question of why now?

It's immediately apparent that if the directors Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka are going to address the legacy of Rienzi, it is going to be through the lens of the present rather than through its Nazi associations or indeed its 14th century historical drama in Rome. The famous overture - one of the enduring qualities of the work - sets a scene across three rooms of a contemporary apartment block are occupied by Cola Rienzi, his sister Irene and a young sick child who we discover is Rienzi's brother Giovanni. 'Party Chairman' Rienzi is preparing a speech venerating German Art while Irene is looking after the sick child. The child dies and as the building rises out of the stage, the neighbouring apartments are seen sharing text messages suggesting an incestuous relationship between Rienzi and his sister, and that the child may have been born out of that relationship.

Act I's clashes between the Colonna and Orsini families here take the form of a heated election debate, with graphics showing election polls and projections, TV cameras broadcasting the election addresses and debates. Talk around Rienzi isn't the only scandal doing the rounds, as Stefano Colonna, an important industrialist, has recently been acquitted of the hit-and-run accident that has led to the death of Giovanni. Rienzi steps in to bring a measured response that strikes a chord with the public and the media, pledging loyalty to Irene and Adriano Colonna, the son of Stefano to serve the people.

Despite the overheated nature of the first Act - somewhat inevitable considering Wagner's dramatic score - its is relatively based in a familiar contemporary reality that soon breaks down, or at least shows a deeper more troubling undercurrent. Having been acclaimed Tribune of Rome, the dull grey and white of Act I is momentarily replaced with a new optimism and pride in the new Rome under the command of Rienzi. But as the sun breaks through the storm clouds in this production's Act II, in Rienzi's mind his dead brother appears as one of the divine Messengers of Peace descending staircase from heaven. Scenes for Rienzi’s reception or "coronation" take place in a Roman senate arrangement where after the failed Caesar-like assassination attempt and coup by Colonna, Rienzi takes on a Christ complex.

Despite the modern trappings - mobile phones held aloft at every move - the Bayreuth production nonetheless adheres closely to the dramatic action as it plays out in the libretto without too many revisionist touches, but also without managing to say anything new about what follows. The contemporary setting at least has a ring of familiarity to it as, for all the ruler's fine words, the real test comes when the 'nobili' - or businesses and wealth holders - rise up against him. Needless to say, Rienzi fails here and it's the ordinary people who pay the price of the cost of war, resulting in the people turning against him. Even though 'modernised', Rienzi resists modernisation, Act III remains every bit as over the top as the most extravagant of grand opera, the production failing to rein its excesses in at all.

Whether a director should even attempt to hold back on Rienzi or not is of course a matter of choice. Wagner scored the work to be a grand, epic statement, but it does risk losing sight of any purpose it might have, getting carried away in its own operatic grandiosity, with caricatures of noble sentiments and foul plots, all arch declamations, formal processions, marching battle-hymns and fervent solemn choruses. It's similarly easy for the audience to just get caught up in the grand sweep of it all to the extent that they ignore the troubling undercurrents of fascism, but at this kind of drawn-out length (even in its reduced form of just under 4 hours), it's also rather wearying.

Although I have seen it a few times, I'm not as familiar with Rienzi as other Wagner operas, but it does seem as if there has been some reordering done to make it flow a little easier. Rienzi sings his Act V aria 'Allmächt'ger Vater' before Act IV's discussion of excommunication (a fair portion of which is conducted through text messages in English), but otherwise under conductor Nathalie Stutzmann, it's the full-on Rienzi experience. Some other unique directorial touches are applied to Act V where Rienzi and Irene seem to consummate their relationship in some kind of death pact while Adriano looks on in shock. The only light touch - or heavy-handed touch maybe - is the use of the Act II ballet music to run through highly compressed scenes from all Wagner's subsequent mature operas, performed in am dram costumes, complete with intervals where the well-heeled audience queue for drinks and toilets.

To be honest, the ballet-theatre scene is indicative of the style of the acting and the direction throughout. There is a token attempt to explore the psychology or psychopathy of a dictator in a proposed invented incestuous relationship with sister and death of his brother (or 'brother’), which doesn't offer a great deal - although it is something of a Wagnerian trait. There is also at least some effort to engage with contemporary political events in the production - perhaps more so than any production at Bayreuth since Frank Castorf's Ring - setting the work in the context of a modern electoral campaign where the far-right are gaining popular votes. The epic grand conclusion that Wagner scores could only be justified when depicted as the eventual complete meltdown of the capitalist system, but it all just feels empty and meaningless after four hours at full tilt orchestration and booming choruses, and the work proves resistant to any attempt to inject an air of cautionary realism into it.

Vocally, aside from the chorus who have an important part to play in this work, much rests inevitably on Andreas Schager's performance as Rienzi and, as is often the case, it's a little over the top (as is the chorus, but in a good way). Certainly the role is written for grand declamation, but Schager doesn't seem to be able to bring it down to any level other than full-on forte that starts loud and gets increasingly strained over the four hours of the opera. The man is going to do himself an injury at this rate. Only when taking the 'Allmächt'ger Vater' aria - presumably placed in Act IV for breathing space - does he manage to show some restraint; in the singing at least; the 'acting' is reduced to lots of wild expressions and writhing around. Sure, the relentless pitch of the opera perhaps demands it, but Schager's performance doesn't make it any easier to relate to it. I liked Gabriela Scherer's performance as Irene, even though her role in the opera remains unfathomable in the psychodrama that is developed here with Rienzi and Adriano. Jennifer Holloway's Adriano is a heroic role that proves powerless to change the course of events; the soprano makes similarly a valiant effort all the way through, but is often overwhelmed by the bombast.

The current rise of the far-right in Germany is all the justification necessary to bring Rienzi to the stage at Bayreuth - let's just hope that the AfD don't adopt the overture for its rallies or history might repeat itself - but if that is indeed the target, it fails to make its mark and just confirms that Rienzi does not need to remain a regular fixture at Bayreuth. Despite the derivativeness of its sources though, it is an accomplished work, worth a look every now and again to admire not so much its sheer folly and ambition, but to see it as a necessary step towards the greatness that would follow from Richard Wagner. It's almost as if all the bad habits of operatic grand opera had to be expelled from the system in order to find his own true voice. This Rienzi is worth seeing, even if it's just to get over the curiosity about whether it really has any merit, and then you can put any such ideas about that aside for another while.

BR-Klassik Livestream, Bayreuther Festspiele

Verdi - La traviata (Buxton, 2026)

Giuseppe Verdi - La traviata

Buxton International Festival, 2026

Adrian Kelly, James Hurley, Alina Adamski, Tigran Melkonyan, André Heyboer, Frances Gregory, Amy J Payne, Harry Thatcher, Christopher Nairne, George Robarts, John Ieuan Jones, James Liu

Buxton Opera House - 22nd July 2026

As I mentioned in my other reviews of the festival, I was somewhat disappointed that the Buxton International Festival had made the decision to no longer perform exclusively rare opera, but times change and I accept that it's probably a commercial and economic necessity. The Buxton festival regulars are not getting any younger and new younger audiences are essential, so recognisable names like Verdi, La traviata and The Merry Widow might have a more popular appeal than something like the 1625 opera La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina (which I would note was a sell-out nonetheless). Still, there are attractions enough elsewhere in the music and book festival, in the Fringe and in the beautiful countryside of the Peak District, so I had no intention of going to see another La traviata, safe in the assurance that seats would still be filled without me. But you find you've seen all the Fringe you want to see, the legs have had all the hiking they can stand and there is an opera on with a few cheap seats left; so what is a committed opera-goer supposed to do?

I even knew what we were in for having seen the glossy productions shots. This was going to be a 'classic' traditional Belle Époque La traviata. There was one original touch, the set opening out from giant size jewellery box inspired by the one owned by Marie Duplessis, the inspiration for Alexandre Dumas' La Dame aux Camélias and the source for Verdi's Violetta Valéry in La traviata. That was the only distinguishing feature from a thousand other La traviatas. In Act I, the costumes were all formal dinner jackets and gaudy long satin dresses, lace frills and red velvet covered chairs; the set cluttered and messy.

There was nothing original in Act II either, Scene I at Violetta's country house was conventional and dull, and director James Hurley was unable to find any way of making the relationship between Violetta and Alfredo feel natural and authentic. There was little sympathy to be felt for the pleas of a lifeless Giorgio Germont who failed to provide any compelling reason why Violetta should abandon the relationship with his son. In Scene II of Act II, the gypsy girls and the matador routines - intrusive at the best of times, but definitely capable of being integrated better into the drama - also failed to excite or set up the struggle between fate and death to come in Act III.

Choosing to stage a frequently performed popular opera at Buxton is one thing, but having a good record of staging lesser-known Verdi operas in the past, I don't really know what possessed them to stage La traviata is such an unoriginal and uninspiring way. The characterisation was non-existent, the interactions lifeless, the direction going through the motions of operatic movements and mannerisms. There was not one original idea or interpretation worth anything here. Verdi had restrictions and censors to get past, so much of the underlying intent and implications about the activities of Violetta Valéry as a courtesan had to be glossed over, but there is no excuse for a director for the modern stage not bringing out the real underlying drive of Verdi's opera. When Violetta refers to herself as 'la traviata', it's even translated in the subtitles as 'lost woman', which could mean just doomed to die. With that La traviata becomes just a head-in-the-clouds impossible romance, the jealousy of a spurned lover, and a chance of happiness snatched away by terminal illness.

The remainder of the Buxton production remained bland. inoffensive and unambitious, saying nothing. La traviata deserves more and so much more can be found in this work, but there was no effort at all to be adventurous and explore the many themes within it. It doesn't need to be as radical as Andrea Breth's Salò-inspired 2012 production for La Monnaie in Brussels - but even the most recent productions I have seen of La traviata (Simon Stone for Paris in 2019 and Tatjana Gürbaca for Den Norske in 2018) before I decided I needed a sabbatical from this overly familiar opera for a few years, all had thoughtful probing ways to bring the subject of domestic abuse and public attitudes towards women who step outside accepted conventional social roles into a more recognisable modern context and thus rekindle the fire that drives the anger expressed by Verdi at the real underlying tragedy of women like Violetta Valéry.

Musically however, as familiar as La traviata is, it serves now and again to be reminded how good Verdi is in wringing the drama and truth out of every scene and emotion. This is Verdi entering into a new mature stage of his opera compositions, with the likes of Luisa Miller, Stiffelio and Rigoletto all showing a closer connection between subject matter and score, moving just a little further on past the conventions of Italian opera laid down by Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini and pushing Italian opera to new heights. Adrian Kelly, the musical director of the Buxton Festival may well have longed to conduct this Verdi opera for that reason - it's such a rich and dynamic score - and all of its qualities, pace, dynamic and rhythm were well handled, even if the stage direction suffocated any real emotion being expressed in it.

The singing also couldn't be faulted other than for the inability to make these characters feel real and not just stuffy cardboard figures going through the motions. Tigran Melkonyan was as good an Alfredo as I've heard, very much in the classic tenor mould. André Heyboer, through no fault of his own and more an issue of direction, was a dull, staid Giorgio Germont, the role sung well but unpersuasive. I was initially unsure about Alina Adamski taking on the role of Violetta for a single performance that was sung for the rest of the run by Alexandra Nowakowski. I would have liked a more mature voice and thought she started weak with some noticeable vibrato in her 'È strano! ... Ah, fors' è lui', but she shone in Act II and Act III, showing a superb range of voice and emotions for what is evidently a hugely intense and challenging role. Her 'Addio del passato' was almost heartbreaking ...almost, but not quite. This production would have needed far more build up for that devastating final scene to have impact. The closing down of the jewellery box should have been more effective, but it didn't quite cut it.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Caccini - La liberazione di Ruggiero (Buxton, 2026)

Francesca Caccini - La liberazione di Ruggiero

Vache Baroque, Buxton International Festival, 2026

Jonathan Darbourne, Eloise Lally, Camilla Seale, Jon Stainsby, Phoebe Rayner, Filippo Turkheimer, Betty Makharinsky, Harriet Burns, Aina Miyagi, Tom Kelly

Pavilion Arts Centre, Buxton - 21st July 2026

The Buxton International Opera spread its wings this year, mixing up the traditional focus on rarely performed opera with a well-worn crowd-pleaser (La traviata) and an operetta (The Merry Widow). It was not a welcome development for my part - personally, I wouldn't take the trouble of flying over from Ireland just to see another La traviata (and yet I went anyway!)- but the regular Buxton attendees aren't getting any younger and there is undoubtedly the necessity of attracting a younger audience that might never have seen the classics. There were however still some rare gems that made a visit to the festival worthwhile, such as an inventive take on Handel's Amidigi di Gaula and an incredible opportunity to be taken back and see life breathed into a piece of opera history with Francesca Caccini's early opera La liberazione di Ruggiero.

Composed in 1625, the first opera to be composed by a woman, they don't come much more obscure than La liberazione di Ruggiero dall'isola d'Alcina. It's rarely performed and not many would ever have had the opportunity or pleasure of seeing this 400 year old work staged. The quality of the work is beyond question, the challenge rather that it needs to be played by musicians specialising in early opera playing instruments of the period. That would be someone like Vache Baroque and having seen their excellent production of Charpentier's unfinished 1687 chamber opera La descente d’Orphée aux enfers at Buxton last year, you could be certain that Caccini's only surviving opera was in safe and experienced hands. Front seat booked for this one.

La liberazione di Ruggiero is indeed a very rare opera, but I have seen it performed before in a production presented by Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Lir Academy of Dramatic Art in 2019 at the Abbey Peacock Theatre in Dublin. My review of that production covers the history of the piece, its qualities and the influence Caccini's work may have had; possibly just as important to the development of opera as Monteverdi. Historical importance aside, it's simply just a beautiful work in how the arrangements of baroque instrumentation work their magic musically and harmonically and in how Caccini chooses to tell the familiar story of the enchantress Alcina and her magical powers, keeping  Ruggiero captive in her twisted garden of discarded lovers who have been corrupted into living plants.

I've seen La liberazione di Ruggiero described as a comic opera - and indeed the 2019 Dublin production retained that element of the opera in their production - but evidently there are any number of ways that a director can reinterpret and reflect the work from a modern perspective. In contrast to how Handel's take on the legends around Orlando Furioso were successfully re-interpreted with more of a comic touch his Amidigi di Gaula at this year's Buxton Festival, director Eloise Lally and the Vache Baroque find a rather darker undercurrent running through Caccini's opera and chose to focus on that instead. That's one of the marvels of being able to see such works side-by-side at a festival such as this, seeing rare early works of opera treated with respect and with the intent to present their themes to a contemporary audience.

Without having to get too revisionist about it, it's clear from the fact that the opera was written by a woman - no less than the first ever opera written by a female composer - that Francesca Caccini brings and places a distinctly feminine aspect on the work with two women in powerful roles as sorceresses: Melissa and Alcina. They are not just opposing forces who use their power for good or for evil - or a least they don't have to be seen that way, and Eloise Lally's interpretation did provide a little more sympathy for Alcina. She may have turned her lovers into twisted trees and plants, but she was acting out of love, however misguided.

Without it having to be over-emphasised (although the programme synopsis does situate this version in the near future or "somewhere between the present and the future: a world ravaged by war") you could also see the dark world as one ravaged by an eco-disaster, war devastation, climate change that has destroyed nature, twisted it and corrupted the inhabitants of the planet. You could even see the magic of the sorceresses as the work of mad science creating destructive weapons, but the production leaves the work open to let such notions arise naturally out of the situation and have resonance in how they relate to the problems in the world that we are familiar with today. 

There isn't a considerable amount of dramatic action in La liberazione di Ruggiero, as is the case with nearly all early and baroque opera, but it has moments of exquisite beauty in how the situations lend themselves to be presented and those situations and expression are enlivened by the musical arrangements and the urgency of the singing. Those in turn are made magical by the vocal harmonies and the musical dissonance or less familiar sounds of the harpsichord (played by musical director Jonathan Darbourne), viola da gamba and theorbo - not to mention the alto, tenor and bass 'sackbuts', which are early trombones.

Needless to say, it all sounded incredible, particularly in the arrangement of the orchestra to the left and right of the stage, providing an enveloping musical environment for those of us in the stalls - the main continuo and accompaniment played to the right of the stage supplemented by triumphal and ominous blasts of the sackbuts and additional recorders on the left of the stalls. The surround musical performance adds another dimension to the performance of this opera, drawing you into the island with sweet sounds and persuasive rhythms that beguile and entrap.

It looked and sounded magnificent, a rare treat and a pleasure to be able to get close to and hear a work performed to such a high standard, aiming towards a fresh interpretation while retaining authenticity of the original instrumentation and character. Those are qualities are brought out in the superb stage production with fine singers with the perfect sweet voices necessary for this. Jon Stainsby in particular was strong and resonant as Ruggiero, tormented by Camilla Seale's darkly brooding Alcina and revived by Phoebe Rayner's lighter voiced Melissa - their voices suited to the nature of the roles. Harriet Burns, Betty Makharinsky and Aina Miyagi had a variety of lyrical roles that blended beautifully with the score. Here's hoping Vache Baroque return to the Buxton Festival soon.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Handel - Amadigi di Gaula (Buxton, 2026)

George Frideric Handel - Amadigi di Gaula

Buxton International Festival, 2026

Erin Helyard, Olivia Fuchs, Timothy Morgan, Rowan Pierce, Hilary Cronin, James Hall

Buxton Opera House - 20th July 2026

He was a bit of a genius, this George Frideric Handel. I realise I'm not making any startlingly original observations there but having seen it at this year's Buxton International Festival's production it seems that in Amadigi di Gaula - and quite a few other Handel operas apparently - he was the originator of the game show concept of Love Island and The Bachelor, or at the very least he anticipated their existence 300 years before the event! Ok, that is perhaps not the greatest claim for the genius of the composer, but what the Buxton Festival production did was show that Handel was certainly in tune with the public's taste for highly charged (and contrived) romance and love drama entertainments. The real cleverness of the production however is in how it shows that Handel's opera seria music - which could potentially come across as quite dry and stuffy - actually has a great sense of fun.

In which case it's the director Olivia Fuchs who is perhaps the real genius here in recognising or finding a way that makes the hothouse love entanglements of figures in a magical fantasy actually relate to something we are familiar with - or at least can recognise - in the modern world, and translate those high-flown melodramatic sentiments into something that still has meaning and relevance to a modern audience. Instead of viewing it in its 18th century incarnation of a Paladin and the Prince of Thrace both being enamoured with the daughter of the King of the Fortunate Isles while a sorceress concocts spells to win the Paladin for herself, the director sets the opera as a reality game show on 'Melissa's Island' where the competition is played out, the contestants undertaking hazardous tasks to find out who is worthy of true love.

There is no sense of any half measure here: director Olivia Fuchs and set designer Eleanor Bull go all out to set the drama as a Love Island TV game show and it works so perfectly you would think that it was written to be presented this way. OK, I don't think those competing for the affections of prospective partners on Love Island threaten to kill themselves and each other quite as often as they do in Handel's Amidigi di Gaula, but as I haven't actually watched any of the reality game shows it is based on, I couldn't say for sure. I have seen newspaper reports of fatalities and contestants suffering serious consequences following their appearances on these shows, so Handel or his librettist (who has not been positively identified as far as I know) may even have been aware of the stakes involved in such public displays of affection and rejection.

But then it's long been a feature of opera - and apparently in life before opera if one can imagine such barbaric times - that love cuts deep. The contestants here on Melissa's Island, or the noble lords and ladies in Amadigi di Gaula if you prefer, are young and headstrong, self-absorbed and beautiful, and presumably used to lovers falling at their fee; yet errors of judgement and misfortunate timing all conspire to make the choice of an ideal romantic partner a lot more difficult than it ought to be. The Buxton production brings out this character brilliantly during the overture, Melissa the hostess/sorceress inviting a line-up of contestants onto the stage, each full of themselves and confident of their charms, leaving us with only the host and the three finalists to get the right partners for each other.

The production is more than just a clever eye-popping set design or clever conceit imposed on Handel. The direction is superb, the figures never resorting to just standing facing the audience and working their way through da capo arias. The four lovers are given some measure of personality and thus a degree of sympathy, without ever getting too deep or serious. I say that but there are deep emotions of all kinds, laments, joyful rhythms and dances and the director makes sure that none of them are just left to go to waste, giving the singers room to express themselves with in it.

Whatever you think of the production - and everyone I spoke to or heard speak about it loved it - at the heart of it all is the music of Handel which explores the range of all those emotions. You would think that the opera seria format and the delivery of da capo arias might be restrictive, that Handel's musical style is a little too elegant and artificial to be matched with a bright modern set, modern attitudes and quite a few added comic touches and nods to the audience, but in reality the artificiality of the setup perfectly matches the artificiality of the contrived idealistic views of the lover/contestants: all of it contrived of course to delight and entertain an audience.

Handel's opera was indeed a great success when it premiered in London in 1715, the composer proving that he had his finger on the pulse of what the public wanted following the success of his first Italian opera in London, Rinaldo (1711), also drawn from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso; Amadigi's original production even employing some spectacular magic effects of its own for the delight of its audience. And indeed, the composer would go on to write quite a few more successful magic operas (or further seasons of Love Island if you like) in Orlando (1733), Ariodante (1735) and Alcina (1735), all likewise drawn from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. I suspect that the way it was presented 300 years ago might not have quite the same impact today, so it is entirely right that the Buxton production should do the same for a modern audience.

With the English Consort orchestra conducted by Erin Helyard, the performance did justice to Handel's score, employing theorbo, recorder and harpsichord without it ever feeling like this was 'old music'. That's a credit to the production as a whole, the music working perfectly with the tone of the comedy and sincerity of the sentiments expressed and played out on the stage. The singing and the dramatic performances were all excellent. One of the benefits of this work is that with only four characters, the love complications are not overly complicated - or need not be as complicated as these figures make it - and each character - all equally deserving of love - get the opportunity to express their feelings in beautiful arias.

Melissa of course the most interesting figure as the sorceress; the schemer, plotting and creating drama, the role was wonderfully sung by Hilary Cronin - who sang in another Handel four-hander Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno in Buxton in 2024 - supplying plenty of character. Timothy Morgan, taking on the role at short notice was a headstrong Amadigi, the character's easy going charm not quite as easy to relate to, but the countertenor played the role with smooth confidence. Rowan Pierce was a bright Oriana and James Hall an impetuous Dardano; more than just love interest secondary characters, they have a vital role to play in their struggle to assert themselves against these powerful forces that would direct their lives in another direction from their hearts. Musically this hit all the right points, the strings striking a dance to the beat of life, the oboe and recorder woodwinds capturing the lyricism of the emotions in this revitalising interpretation of a delightful Handel opera.

External links: Buxton International Festival

Tchaikovsky - The Maid of Orleans (Amsterdam, 2025)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - The Maid of Orleans

Dutch National Opera, 2025

Valentin Uryupin, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Elena Stikhina, Allan Clayton, Nadezhda Pavlova, Vladislav Sulimsky, Andrey Zhilikhovsky, John Relyea, Oleksiy Palchykov, Gábor Bretz, Patrick Guetti, Eva Rae Martinez, Tigran Matinyan

ARTE Concert

It may have inspired at least one of the greatest films ever made, but Joan of Arc is a problematic work for an opera, at least as far as Verdi and Tchaikovsky are concerned. The focus on the spiritual side of Joan of Arc, the strength of her inner light and purpose and use her determination to inspire others is perhaps what makes Dryer's The Passion of Joan of Arc and Bresson's The Trial of Joan of Arc deeply moving. Opera, particularly in this period (Verdi's Giovanno d'Arco in 1845, Tchaikovsky's in 1879), demanded a little more conventional romance and drama built into the exigencies of wartime duty. That's not to say that the spiritual side of the story is neglected, but can get overwhelmed by the roar of battle cries. Or at least that's been my experience of those rarely performed works.

Dmitri Tcherniakov, controversial in his manner of often reworking or twisting original scenarios to suit his own vision for them but in my opinion infallible when it comes to drawing the inner essence out of great Russian operas, can hardly be faulted then for attempting to 'fix' Tchaikovsky's The Maid of Orleans. Typically he sets this production far from its historical 15th century battlefield, but not only that, to further downplay any idea of war heroism, he already has Joan placed under arrest and on trial at the start of the opera. In Act I that successfully straddles the line between courtroom and town hall meeting, where Joan's refusal to behave as she is expected to do as a young woman and submit to marriage is already a crime laid against her, the events leading to it then viewed as scenes in flashback.

Seven weeks into her trial, some of the town folk are getting frustrated with the young woman's deranged visions, but with war threatening Orléans, fear takes hold and the sense of grace that exudes from the charismatic Joan is nonetheless seductive, bringing hope. Opera has the advantage here of being able to convey that characteristic in the voice (although the lack of a speaking voice certainly did not detract from Carl Th. Dreyer's 1928 silent movie masterpiece). Inevitably messing with time lines and locations in Tcherniakov's version causes some misalignment with the opera plot, but rightly the intent is not to make the slightly ludicrous or at least unfashionable dated dramatic historical action credible, but rather to serve to bring out the deeper spiritual side of the work.

Spiritual maybe, but as he has made plain in everything from Dialogues des Carmélites to Parsifal, Tcherniakov is not going to depict any of Joan's visions in terms of religious or quasi-religious mysticism, but from a profoundly humanistic viewpoint. Which does not mean idealistic either, particularly in this case where the outcome of those deep convictions lean towards fighting and killing. Joan receives her messages from the lights above the fans in the town hall/courtroom, rather than any celestial visitation. There is no time either for earnest stilted declamation (or subtitles), which I thought undermined this work the last time I viewed it, and accordingly characters here are seen behaving irreverently or mockingly whenever it occurs. The long scene between King Charles VII and Agnes Sorel works partly due to this but credit must also be given to the singing performances of Allan Clayton and Nadezhda Pavlova, who are outstanding here. That's also a measure of good direction, subverting pomposity without undermining the work, just shifting the focus towards the work's real strengths and the purpose which is to highlight the experience and fate of Joan subjected to the judgement of her society.

The same applies to Tchaikovsky's roaring choruses and bombastic score which, as I observed before, is somewhat over the top in his vaunting the nationalistic heroism of warriors, but when turned inward it can be very powerful indeed, and it is well directed towards that in Valentin Uryupin's conducting of the Netherlands Philharmonic. It's not entirely possible to eliminate the jingoism in the libretto, but Tcherniakov never lets that side of the declamations dominate. Evidently, taking it out of the historical period and adopting a more modern perspective on the actions of the state helps make that case; the abuse of the prevailing religious and political establishment is more recognisable in this context and it hits all the harder for it. Even Joan's glorious acclaim from the people is subverted here, seen as nothing more than a hallucination of her own fevered mind having been locked up and abused in a prison cell. Aligned with Tchaikovsky's music it's incredibly powerful, setting up the underlying tragedy of the young woman's treatment in the run up to the dramatic conclusion. 

If you were to take the opera's libretto and setting literally as the historical Joan of Arc, you would have to think that Joan's divinity or position as a national hero and feminist is compromised here in Tcherniakov's vision. She becomes a tool, her mental illness (the titles above the stage clearly indicating that these are "hallucinations") turning towards religious fervour and used as a way of controlling the war narrative, leading the people to killing and death for the benefit of the ruling powers. But whatever perspective you want to place on her legacy, it's not the historical Joan that is of interest to Tcherniakov, but her underlying humanity and her mistreatment at their hands of the authorities. The DNO production uses Tchaikovsky’s operatic version of Friedrich Schiller's dramatic account, whose adherence to historical facts is hardly the most accurate account (nor meant to be), as a way of bringing all those forces together, showing how they work and how they use people for their own ends.

There are no real surprises there as far as the look, feel and outlook of a typical Dmitri Tcherniakov interpretation of an operatic work, which for all its apparent divergence from the original intent, supports the music, brings the opera up to date and indeed validates its deeper truths. What stands out then are indeed those musical qualities of Tchaikovsky at full tilt, yet maintaining those familiar lyrical qualities and tragic elements more familiar from Eugene Onegin, Iolanta (both of which Tcherniakov has directed) and The Queen of Spades; lyrical qualities that particularly when sung with authentic Russian voices can be very impressive. All the cast are excellent in that regard, but Elena Stikhina as Joan is hugely impressive, giving a breathtaking, committed performance that rises to the occasion, holding you captivated through the young woman's glory and torment as much as Falconetti did when she immortalised Joan of Arc in Dreyer's film version. High praise indeed.

Links: Dutch National Opera, ARTE Concert