The mother of all art forms. According to opera lovers.
What does the future of opera look like? The National Opera tries to answer this in the Opera Forward Festival: new visions new voices, organised for the first time this year to mark its 50th anniversary. The ten-day festival kicks off 15 March with the world premiere of Only the Sound Remains by Kaija Saariaho. About...
1. Kwatta, Mariken (youth) The question was not whether Nijmegen youth theatre company Kwatta would ever venture into Mariken van Nieumeghen, but when. The bar was set high with successful previous book and film adaptations, but where the medieval Mariken needs two miracles, Jibbe Willems' adaptation is exciting even without a fall from a great height and the miraculous loosening of iron rings...
Huge, deep black shadows fall on a backdrop of calligraphic foliage in every conceivable shade of grey. Director Peter Sellars intently follows the movements of the three main characters during a run-through of 'Feather Mantle' at De Nationale Opera. Together with 'Always Strong', this short opera forms the double-bill Only the Sound Remains by Kaija Saariaho with which 15 March's Opera Forward Festival...
Following the exploration of the labour market in the cultural sector made by the Social and Economic Council (SER) and the Council for Culture last month, there was a lot of attention on the low earning self-employed in the cultural sector. Promising headlines such as "Everyone gets paid except the artist" (NRC) and "It's a matter of waiting every month to see if I earn enough" (Volkskrant) could account for recognition...
'In the new season, we go back to normal,' Pierre Audi said on Monday 15 February during the presentation of the new season of The National Opera. He does, however, continue the forward-looking Opera Forward Festival, which was set up to mark its 50th anniversary. There are also quite a few new own productions on the roll, including the world premiere of...
Mozart's Così fan tutte performed by the Nederlandse Reisopera on 12 February at the Theatre Carré, is far from playful. Xander Straat's direction has many pretensions that deliver little substance and a static picture. The momentum of this opera giocoso is in the music itself and in the formidable voices of the young soloists. Unreliable Women Così fan tutte, or The School...
Never before has the Holland Festival placed itself at the centre of society as it is today. The 2016 programme is steeped in the turbulent times in which we live. The Netherlands holds the presidency of the European Union this spring. Artistic director Ruth Mackenzie has taken this fact unflinchingly to give 'Europe' a wide place in the programming. In presenting...
Baroque specialist and conductor Andrea Marcon, together with his La Cetra Barockorchester, manages to weave a fine lace work in Vivaldi's opera seria Catone in Utica (1678 - 1741), on which, among others, German soprano Anett Fritsch, Swedish mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg and striking Italian mezzo-soprano Francesca Ascioti shine like precious jewels. The international cast of Catone in Utica...
It is not often that Norman Lebrecht, author of the globally widely read blog Slipped Disc, covers conductors of the Orchestra of the East two days in a row. First on the departure of principal conductor Jan Willem de Vriend, then on the appointment of former principal conductor Jaap van Zweden to the world-famous New York Philharmonic. Naturally, Lebrecht brought both...
He would have turned 91 on 26 March, but died Tuesday night, 5 January, in his hometown of Baden-Baden. Pierre Boulez was the last surviving composer of the group that changed the direction of music after WWII. His fellow maestros preceded him: Karlheinz Stockhausen died in 2007, Luciano Berio in 2003, Karel Goeyvaerts in 1993 and...
Only Maastricht, Den Bosch and Enschede were able to enjoy Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors. Far too little for an opera that has only been seen in our country twice before (in 1988 and 1965) but has everything it takes to win a young audience for the genre ánd is the December opera par excellence. Especially when the mini-opera is so...
Time for our success list. In 2015, we attracted 60,000 more visitors than in 2014. That's something to be proud of. A website that focuses on the stories that existing media find the small, and then figures like that. That we attracted those 300,000 visitors is one, that they spent an average of 2 and a half minutes per story,...
Although the supply has been declining for years, there are still more new shows than a person can see. So nobody sees everything, everybody misses a lot, which was the case in 2014. But these performances no one would have wanted to miss, even if two of them were not even seen in a theatre. And no dance, for that our partner was dance audiences this year too. #1...
You have to dare to do it: name an opera after the main organiser behind the mass deportations and extermination camps of Jews in World War II and then not perform him as a character. Composer Alejandra Castro Espejo and librettist Bo Tarenskeen did it: their opera Eichmann, a production of the Diamond Factory, will premiere at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ on Wednesday 9 December. Adolf Eichmann was...
By 1970, Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007) had run out of 'intuitive' compositions in which the performer had to choose his or her own path from a series of written instructions. Like Intensity, for example, whose score consists of this text: Play the individual notes with such dedication until you feel the warmth radiating from you. Play on and keep them on as long as you can....
The National Opera, Hänsel und Gretel (opera) It is the best-known fairy tale opera of all time. Not surprisingly, as Humperdinck's adaptation of Hansel and Gretel is overtly rooted in folk music as in almost Wagnerian orchestration. It was bound to be a success. Richard Strauss conducted the world premiere; Amsterdam features International Opera Award Winner Lotte de Beer's version. She moves...
Terezín, 1944. In the most deplorable conditions imaginable, Victor Ullmann completes the opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis. The camp authorities forbid a first performance after a few rehearsals. The unmistakable allegory on Hitler and his downfall leads to one of the rare forms of censorship in the camp, which the Nazis showed as an example to the Red Cross....
OPERA2DAY presents the world premiere of Mariken in de tuin der lusten at the Koninklijke Schouwburg in The Hague on 11 October. An opera with the collaboration of an impressive list of artists, including composer Calliope Tsoupaki, Asko|Schönberg and actress Hannah Hoekstra as Mariken. But will you achieve success with an opera, with modern-classical music moreover and Middle Dutch text? Director and creator Serge van Veggel...
On Thursday 8 October, I saw a live performance of Verdi's opera Il trovatore at Amsterdam's Muziektheater for the first time. It was not an unmixed pleasure. During the first two acts, The Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra, the National Opera Chorus and the soloists were so out of sync that I considered leaving at the interval. A good friend...
On 7 October, the first try-out of Calliope Tsoupaki's opera Mariken in de tuin der Lusten will go on at Theater aan de Schie in Schiedam. Sunday 11 October is the world premiere at the Koninklijke Schouwburg in The Hague. At the invitation of Opera2Day, Tsoupaki immersed herself in Mariken van Nieumeghen, heroine of the miracle play of the same name that took place exactly five hundred years ago in...
In a full University Theatre on Tuesday 6 October, Pierre Audi gave a master class for young singers, dramaturgs and directors. Three scenes had been prepared by the students and were then expertly filleted by Audi. "Sorella, que dici?.... Prenderò quel brunettino", from Mozart's Così fan tutte began as a scene of two punk girls gripped by consumerism. The director and trainee dramatists...
Nederlandse Reisopera, Madama Butterfly (opera), 3 September to 10 October Dutch sopranos are like footballers. They fly halfway around the world, but are only rarely seen in their own country. Take Annemarie Kremer, nominated in Germany as 'Sängerin des Jahres'. The Nederlandse Reisopera is taking her all over the Netherlands in the role that brought her world fame: the title role of Madama ...
Previously, he created the show Being Arthur for Kameroperahuis Zwolle, in which the famous knights of the round table travel across the country by coach. On Friday 4 September, during the Stadsfestival Zwolle, you will sail by boat to the premiere of his latest opera, Ik Vertrek. A love couple leaves the hectic world behind and returns to nature, where...
Three days of classical music among the trees and cows. Festival Wonderfeel presented a unique classical music festival last weekend from 24 to 26 July, under the smoke of 's-Graveland. Top musicians from home and abroad gave dozens of concerts. Lectures were given and, as befits a festival, there was also plenty to eat, drink and...
Those who apply for grants but do not receive them must be given insight into the applications of others who have been honoured. That is the most remarkable ruling by the Council of State in the case Holland Opera won against the Performing Arts Fund. Much more important for the company itself, of course: according to our highest court, in 2012 the Performing Arts Fund decided Holland...
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