The mother of all art forms. According to opera lovers.
The separation between the Netherlands and Belgium was due to an opera at the Brussels Monnaie Theatre in 1830. During a certain song in the opera De Stomme van Portici, the flame flared and the opera-goers ran out of the hall like an angry mob to chase Den 'Ollander out of town. Such behaviour turns out to be more logical than you...
Subscribe to our free newsletter. Because you can! Here's why. Holland Festival, Poetry International, a summer full of art. And meanwhile, a whole new arts system is being put together. The Netherlands is eager to get outside, experience music, experience art and eat food trucks empty. And flipping the subsidy system. It is a...
On Tuesday 13 March, the Opera Forward Festival opens with Hans Werner Henze's Das Floss der Medusa. This 1968 oratorio fits seamlessly with the third edition's theme of Fate and Conscience. It was inspired by a true story from 1816, when the French frigate Méduse ran aground on the African coast. Those on board were left to their fate;...
We're sitting in the opera house; We're waiting for the curtain to arise With wonders for our eyes; We're feeling pretty gay, [...] A feeling of expectancy, A certain kind of ecstasy, Expectancy and ecstasy... Sh's's's's. "Curtain!" With the above words, Charles Ives sang of the excitement of a child going to the opera for the first time. A similar enthusiasm shows...
The neat couple next to me, in the front row at the Holland Festival press conference, hadn't counted on it for a moment. Four members of the Nederlands Kamerkoor starting to undress one by one down to their pecker-sized nakie. A giggle, a small cough, but hey, this is the Holland Festival, they said to each other. So too...
At the first opportunity, he abandons her. He leads a debauched life, marries another and ends up in the madhouse. Yet Anne Truelove continues to love Tom Rakewell, the protagonist in The Rake's Progress. The National Opera will present its fourth production of Stravinsky's opera from 1 February, in collaboration with Aix-en-Provence. There, last July, the...
From the ominous clarion notes at the beginning to the whisper strings dying into nothingness at the end, everything sounds like clockwork. Yet Michele Mariotti is conducting Giuseppe Verdi's La forza del destino for the first time. He makes his debut at De Nationale Opera with this rarely performed opera. Mariotti came, saw and conquered. He seems to be a born Verdi interpreter, from...
The advantage of being a subscriber to Culture Press is, of course, mainly that we can exist thanks to you. So our independent sound remains audible, so you get the interpretation of the news as you get it nowhere else. In June, a total of 14 authors hit the road for you to see as many Holland Festival performances as possible....
The opening image of Octavia. Trepanation is an immediate hit. On either side of Lenin's lauded head is an army of Chinese terracotta warriors. - Headless. Lenin's brain suffices for all, the suggestion is. Associations with the image of Che Guevara in Reconstruction from 1969 come to mind. But where that opera conveyed its (anti-American) message with crystal clarity,...
Herod has not yet uttered his cry "Kill this woman!" or his soldiers roughly lift Salome onto their shoulders and hurl her into hell. - The fancy drawing room, which had been turned into a ruin, was visible through a see-through hatch for almost the entire opera. Salome's blood-soaked dress seems to flare up for a moment, but then - pats! - the...
Culture Press is an indispensable addition to the cultural news in your newspaper, on the internet or on TV. Independent, quirky, rebellious and above all: useful. After all, there is already enough nonsense about art. You'll understand that we don't serve the millions of readers that the big publishers and their advertisers exist on. Which is why everyone else does so little about art....
Last year, a minor riot erupted when the Holland Festival announced it was mounting a large-scale project in 2019 around Karlheinz Stockhausen's opera Light. Modern-music haters screamed blue murder, because who is waiting for the German wordsmith's nasty squeak? Yet a run on the charts immediately ensued. Even after his death...
We are real Holland Festival specialists by now. We go and see performances beforehand, interview makers, actors and walk around the halls, in the foyers, just about every day. We hear a lot, we see a lot and we share it here. Cultural journalism as it should be, in short. Cultural journalism that should also be there. And it totally succeeds if you take out a subscription. Then you get...
Using a television interview as a libretto for an opera? Quirky composer Huba de Graaff does not shy away from it. On 22 June, her opera The Naked Shit Songs will have its world premiere. It is based on a 1996 conversation by Theo van Gogh with British artist duo Gilbert & George. Due to lack of interest, De Graaff wanted her opera with a...
Friday 12 May kicks off the twelfth edition of Operadagen Rotterdam. Titled Lost & Found, the ten-day festival is dedicated to current refugee issues. I selected three operas by Calliope Tsoupaki, Annelies van Parys and Claron McFadden, strong women whose work deserves to be heard (and seen). The fear of the unknown is as old as the...
It is not easy to visit an opera presented as a stunning piece of contemporary social criticism without fear. Especially when it evokes such totally different reactions. Some call The New Prince 'an opera on the vein of our own time' (Mischa Spel, NRC), while others give it 'a fat fail' (Erik Voermans, Het Parool). Another needs more...
Initiated by Pierre Audi in 2016, the Opera Forward Festival questions the future of musical theatre. The 13-day festival offers (young) creators and singers a chance to explore new avenues. For the second edition, Audi himself directed And You Must Suffer, a music-theatrical version of Bach's St John Passion. This production by Muziektheater Transparant and the early music ensemble B'Roque experienced its Tuesday 28 March...
We have to perform, from an early age. If you don't go along with that, you will be left out. It is the thrust of Alban Berg's opera Wozzeck, now to be seen at De Nationale Opera directed by Krzystof Warlikowski. The Polish theatre innovator has turned one of the most dramatic operas in music history into a fascinating musical...
'Many opera productions still assume a nineteenth-century vision of the world,' says German composer Moritz Eggert (1965) in the podcast below. 'But art must be relevant to our own times; the answers of then are not the answers of now. Our current problems are largely rooted in our colonial past, in our exploitation of other countries ...
'The smaller the community the narrower the mind,' says Krzysztof Warlikowski. The Polish director makes his debut at De Nationale Opera this month with Alban Berg's Wozzeck. It is the second time he has taken on this iconic work of the 20th century. To this end, he draws on his own experiences during his childhood in Stettin. It is exceptionally...
When the Commendatore suddenly rises from his bier in the mortuary, Leporello recoils violently. He smacks painfully against the back wall, as if struck by a gust of hurricane-force wind. This cartoonish image is just one of many hilarious moments in Don Giovanni by the Nederlandse Reisopera. This production was performed after its premiere Saturday 4 March in the...
A prelaunch of the Opera Forward Festival OFF [hints]From 18 to 31 March at De Nationale Opera (formerly the Muziektheater/Stopera)[/hints], among other venues, was organised last night at Amsterdam's new society Sexyland. I was impressed. Pretty surprising. Opera Nopera Disclaimer: the author of this one is not an opera director. The last two operas I saw were both by Philip Glass (the true...
'Before we start the actual presentation, let me give you some facts & figures,' says Els van der Plas, general director of the National Opera & Ballet. 'No, not the alternative facts,' she adds wittily. The ghost of the US president will be through the Stopera more often this afternoon. Van der Plas recalls the successes that...
Ruth Mackenzie has achieved an enormous amount in the short time she has been boss of Holland Festival. I've experienced the festival now since the late 1990s and watched it evolve from something very personal and sometimes obscure (under Ivo van Hove), to an ethereal feast of sizzling aesthetics (with Pierre Audi), to what it...
'Unleashing war is the best way to escape from yourself,' we read on the gauze screen in front of the Stopera stage. Then the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra begins Alexander Borodin's Prince Igor. A catchy one-liner, but it raises expectations that are not met. Musically, too, this co-production of De Nationale Opera and the New...
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