The mother of all art forms. According to opera lovers.
Saturday 6 December sees the start of the first edition of Music Theatre Days, the successor to the annual Babel Festival. To present the work of young makers, the Ostadetheatre and production core Diamantfabriek joined forces again, for a programme that offers flash performances by conservatory students alongside world premieres by professional makers. Splendor's monthly Salon also takes place at the Ostadetheatre. Red thread...
Those stars at reviews. Now I'd like to know how you got those. Explain.
Good. The first 30 minutes of Wagner's Lohengrin at De Nationale Opera are unforgettable. First the Vorspiel with the curtain closed, played heartbreakingly beautifully by the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra which, under Marc Albrecht's direction, does justice to every nuance. We haven't heard it this impressive and...
For fine art, you go to the museum, especially in Amsterdam and especially now that all the museums have reopened. But there is also another option: the opera. There you see visual art that doesn't fit in any museum, not even in the largest room of the Rijksmuseum. Take the Greek sculptor Jannis Kounellis. From today, his work is a...
This Friday break on Radio Futura members of Dood Paard and tg STAN are pondering what art is, and how much it should cost.
Drama reviews mainly fill a need among artists and journalists. Newspaper readers hardly use them. In London, this has been studied. Only 36 per cent of theatre-goers say they read reviews. Much more value fans place on tips from friends and family. Last Saturday at Amsterdam's De Balie debate centre, there was a discussion between theatre-makers,...
Days after the grand scenic world premiere of Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder, De Nationale Opera once again comes up with a more than remarkable production of international stature. Everything and everyone dances and sings. (1) So you think you can dance? Sure. The modern opera singer(s) is used to something. Simply stepping forward and singing your aria was outdated decades ago. And.
For the second consecutive year, the Festival of Early Music is organising a Laboratory, in which young creators can learn about their craft. This year's programme features Medea by Czech composer Georg Benda. This 'melodrama', an alternation of spoken text with music, was a resounding success at its premiere in 1775. Musicologist Jed Wentz and scholar Mary Helen Dupree revived it...
More than a century we had to wait, but at last Arnold Schoenberg's Gurre-Lieder also to be seen. Surprisingly, it is not. Reportedly, the composer was against it, as it concerns a cantata. However, director Pierre Audi and conductor Marc Albrecht show very convincingly with this scenic world premiere that Gurre-Lieder hid an opera that yearned for the stage light.
There is a world outside Amsterdam. There is culture there too. High-quality even. And of course, Amsterdammers know that too. After all, that whole world comes to Amsterdam every year for the Holland Festival, and if it were up to the director of the Amsterdam Stadsschouwburg Melle Daamen, a lot more would come from abroad. Ballet, for example. Our national...
The 300-strong audience stood up as one after Leonard Bernstein's infectious performance of Candide at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam last night. The performance of this 'pocket version' of Bernstein's cheerful musical/opera about the incorrigible optimist Candide, produced by the Nationale Reisopera, took place indoors, in the hotel's ballroom, due to the weather conditions. After all, the Grachtenfestival has to be...
It is the most ambitious summer festival in the Netherlands: Festival Boulevard in Den Bosch aims to showcase not only the finest theatre theatre theatre in the low countries, but also the fattest shows, and youngest new creators and the merriest bus drivers. And all that in 10 days, in once tad where the local newspaper does its best to promote culture as scary as possible to make. We briefly summarise it for you in eight enticing words.
The difference is just an 'h'. But confusing it is. This week, the rock opera 'Oh That Sea' premieres in Zeeland. In a month's time, the spherical location performance 'Oh Die Zee' will launch in The Hague, just as the Zeeland show is having its final weekend. The performances are both also about the Odyssey, the classic Greek epic about a Greek hero who, after destroying the city of Troy, takes 10 years to return to his own city, where he then has to kill 100 more lovers of his wife.
He could have become an important director, but was at the wrong time, in the wrong place. In the end, his illness fatally bothered Matthias Mooij. Yesterday, this still young theatre-maker died of lung cancer, more than a year and a half after the premiere of his first large-venue production: Mogadishu. With that performance, of a play written by the English writer Vivienne Franzmann, Mooij put a new tone in the theatre: no longer did he fall back on theatre-familiar, mainly German and Austrian repertoire, opting instead for British authors.
Is a performance opera if not a note is sung? If the audience sits on a stand in a car park with headphones on their heads? Or if a man cries out like a dog with a tongue out of his mouth throughout the performance? The definitions of opera are stretched quite a bit at five Oerol performances. Interestingly, hardly anyone calls the performance opera. By necessity, musical theatre is often used, but that term does not really fall into a warm bath.
Do you remember? The band-aid Halbe Zijlstra offered the cultural sector in the form of the Giving Act? Tax breaks would definitely lead to more sponsorship, so the impact of the austerity measures would not be nearly as dramatic as the sector itself cried out.
From 2007, video artist Matthew Barney (The Cremaster Cycle) and composer Jonathan Bepler on a free adaptation of Norman Mailer's most maligned book Ancient Evenings. To Mailer's mythology of ancient Egypt, they added the equally mythical American automobile industry in an ambitious and operatesque film project with a demanding length of 5 hours 11 minutes.
From February River of Fundament on world tour and the Holland Festival
In an immaculate virginal white uniform, Don Juan gives a slick press conference for his wedding to Elvira. We hear the famous words with which Bill Clinton denied the Lewinsky affair. Actor Ischa den Blanken's grin speaks volumes when he says: 'These allegations are false.' We know: he is lying.
Even before the Holland Festival had begun properly, all tickets for the three performances of Handel's Orlando sold. What a crisis. However, it is not hard to guess why.
After partially or even completely failed productions of Falstaff The National Opera now does everything right. Twenty years after the previous attempt in the Holland Festival, Verdi's last opera gets a dream performance that could only just become audience favourite of the entire festival.
Win tickets for The NEWS at Paradiso
Big new, small news. News is everywhere, there is no escape. On the street, in one's own living room. What starts at the breakfast table can become world news. So: what is your news today? Let us know, share this page and take a picture, post it on facebook and twitter. Add #thenewsnl and win two tickets to the reality opera that will permanently change your view of the news.
Jubilant reviews. With the 'reality opera' The News, the Nederlandse Reisopera has a hit on its hands. However, the familiar theatre setting is being abandoned for pop temple Paradiso. Whether you like opera or not: five reasons to go.
Barely five months between first audition and first performance. That was all the time the makers and local residents had for the Volksopera Ondiep, which experienced the first of two performances on Friday 23 May. It was a warm May evening, touching at times, sometimes dreadful, but fun anyway: classics by Verdi (most of them), Bizet, Puccini and Offenbach, set to Dutch text and sung by complete amateurs. Accompanied, for once, by the Groot Omroepkoor.
The news: today it is hot, tomorrow the fish will be wrapped in it. In his video opera The News gives Jacob ter Veldhuis/JacobTV it a second life by putting it in a new context. 'These days, news is infotainment, dipped in sentiment.' Next Friday, the Dutch Travel Opera the premiere at the Wilminkteather in Enschede.
To perhaps the most beautiful music written by Strauss, Arabella descends the stairs and hands Mandryka a glass of water. Their engagement is thus sealed. Behind the loving couple, however, an inky black space opens up into which both disappear.
'Harry Partch knew exactly what he was doing. He chose very specific bourbon bottles to fill in those 43 steps in the octave. So he made music that is very accessible, but also very elusive. And that's what good art should do.'
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