George Jahn

Sep 15, 2024 | gramophone.co.uk | George Jahn

Once again, this year’s Salzburg Festival had something for just about every opera lover. Romeo Castellucci’s Don Giovanni presented Mozart’s arch-antihero as a despicable heel and lots of on-stage symbolism underpinning his amorality. Mariame Clément's production of Offenbach’s signature opera turned Hoffmann’s tragic amorous adventures into a kind of filmed documentary. Peter Sellars's busy stage vision of Prokofiev’s The Gambler went hand-in-glove with Prokofiev’s relentlessly frenetic score.

Jul 12, 2024 | bachtrack.com | George Jahn

As the curtain falls on Rigoletto with the weeping jester bent over his daughter’s corpse, it takes a leap to apply Giuseppe Verdi’s dictum that good opera must leave the audience “feeling enriched and inspired”. By the end, it’s seen a lecherous libertine deceive and rape an innocent young girl who then sacrifices her life for his, with her father, mocked and abused because of his deformity, being the ultimate instrument of her death.

Feb 5, 2024 | bachtrack.com | George Jahn

It speaks to the powerful stage presence of Andrea Brassói-Jőrös that she maintains the tension despite a libretto that has Rusalka being struck dumb for most of Act 2 of Dvořák’s signature opera. But in her role as the tragic water nymph who falls in love with a mortal, dooming them both, she was not the only good thing in the Hungarian State Opera’s new production.

Jun 21, 2023 | bachtrack.com | George Jahn