Salzburger Festspiele [ENA] At sixteen, Mozart already knew how to write a diva an aria that would make to gasp. What he did not yet know — could not have known — was how to make an opera seria psychologically watertight from the first bar to the last. That contradiction is the drama of Lucio Silla, and it is exactly what this semi-staged Salzburg reading, given at the Felsenreitschule, chose to expose rather than to varnish.   [Full story...]

Musicalsommer Kufstein, Festungsarena [ENA] There is something almost surreal about hearing the song of Bee Gees "Stayin' Alive" bounce off dolomite battlements first raised in the twelfth century. And yet, on a warm Tyrolean night in the Festungsarena, that is precisely the collision of eras that makes the Musicalsommer Kufstein production of Saturday Night Fever one of the summer's most joyful open-air events.   [Full story...]