Laura Servidei

5 days ago | bachtrack.com | Laura Servidei

The Teatro alla Scala has quickly reached the third chapter of Wagner’s Ring cycle: Siegfried. Sir David McVicar’s production follows the aesthetic and conceptual continuity of the first two episodes, embracing a more traditional fantasy storytelling approach, which perhaps fits this opera more than the two preceding ones. The palette is dominated by oppressive charcoal greys, with large, literalist structures that closely follow the libretto, free from ideological reinterpretation.

1 week ago | bachtrack.com | Laura Servidei

Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria is the second of only three surviving operas by Claudio Monteverdi with a nearly complete score, missing just a few choruses and ballets. Composed in 1640 for Venice’s Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, it was written when Monteverdi was 73 – a very advanced age for the time. This year, the Monteverdi Festival in Cremona presents a new production by director Davide Livermore, who began his musical career as a singer of Monteverdi’s works.

2 weeks ago | bachtrack.com | Laura Servidei

The Monteverdi Festival in Cremona presented this week Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice as an opening event ahead of the Festival’s official starton the Friday with Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria. Orfeo ed Euridice stands as the defining work of Gluck’s operatic reform, shifting away from the ornate, fantastical plots and rich ornamentations of Baroque opera toward a more direct and emotionally charged narrative.

2 weeks ago | bachtrack.com | Laura Servidei

The Salzburg Whitsun Festival, celebrating the city of Venice, concluded with a gala concert honoring Gioachino Rossini. The program featured excerpts from operas that premiered in the lagoon city, as well as works whose stories unfold there. The festival’s artistic director, Cecilia Bartoli, is one of the most distinguished Rossini interpreters of recent decades.

2 weeks ago | bachtrack.com | Laura Servidei

At a Whitsun Festival celebrating Venice, it was no surprise that Antonio Vivaldi took center stage with Hotel Metamorphosis – a pasticcio weaving together his most famous arias to tell five different tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The pasticcio, a form popular in the 18th century, was a collection of musical numbers drawn from various works, sometimes by multiple composers, adapted to fit a new, often fanciful storyline.