I’m just back from this year’s festival, planned by Hinterhäuser and taking the same kind of risks. Some worked, others fell spectacularly flat. I first encountered Romeo Castellucci’s work in his 2018 Salome in the Felsenreitschule and still regret not awarding it the full five stars. His devotion to Messiaen’s Saint François d’Assise in the same venue is absolute. I’d only ever experienced the work in a BBC Proms semi-staging and recall it lasting forever, so I approached this six-hour staging with trepidation. But I was completely bowled over (click here to read my Opera Now review).

Carmen and Ariadne auf Naxos are operatic staples. Hinterhäuser was never going to play safe with his directors. I really liked Ersan Mondtag’s Salome for Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, but on the evidence of his Pearl Fishers in Vienna and this muddled Ariadne, I now harbour severe doubts. I’m actually not averse to his decision to set the action in a colony on Mars, per se, but his distortion of the narrative in the Opera proper is wilful beyond the pale.

In many ways, Gabriela Carrizo’s Carmen annoyed me even more because she and conductor Teodor Currentzis happen to get so much right. An experienced choreographer and co-director of dance theatre company Peeping Tom, Carrizo here tackles opera for the first time and, like so many first-timers, simply throws too much at the stage, desperate to fill every bar with frenetic action. When she finally allows the central couple – the excellent Asmik Grigorian and Jonathan Tetelman – space in the final scene, the atmosphere crackles. But then she cocks up the denouement…

Christof Loy’s Così fan tutte isn’t new. It was the result of another creative risk, first mounted in the Covid summer of 2020. While the rest of the world was tied up in health restriction red tape, Salzburg – led by Hinterhäuser and the formidable Helga Rabl-Stadler – put on a festival regardless, adhering to a strict regime of lateral flow testing and social distancing. Back then, it was cut to play without an interval. Now, Loy returns to expand his staging, again with Joana Mallwitz conducting crisply and, with one exception, the same cast. It was simply wonderful.

I also caught Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims which Barrie Kosky turns into an hilarious sex farce with a game cast led by the irrepressible Cecilia Bartoli. Instead of assembling at The Golden Lily hotel to travel to the coronation of Charles X, the guests are invited to La Ceci’s 60th birthday party. It’s as camp as a row of tents, fizzy and funny, even if not all the singers are Rossini naturals. Both Così and Viaggio will appear in my Salzburg round-up in the next issue of Opera Now.

Somehow, between five operas and as many visits to Eisgreissler (the best gelateria in town), I managed to fit in two concerts. Visiting the Mozarteum is always a pleasant experience; a compact venue and, with cheaper ticket prices, a more genial audience, there for the music rather than to be seen. The Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra played their Mozart matinee with punch, especially a robust Haffner Symphony under Roberto González-Monjas. Alexander Melnikov was the sensitive soloist in the Piano Concerto No.12 in A major but the piece I enjoyed the most was the delectable ‘Nacht Musique’ Wind Serenade in C minor, K.388. I’m not convinced the eight players needed a conductor, but it was luminously performed. I especially enjoyed the contributions of oboist Sasha Calin and clarinettist Ferdinand Steiner, who seems like a lot of fun.

Yesterday morning, a real treat: a matinee with the Vienna Philharmonic and Russian conductor Tugan Sokhiev. I rate Sokhiev highly, recalling a brilliant Paris concert with his Toulouse orchestra where they nearly took the roof off the Philharmonie with The Firebird Suite. More Russian fare here – Sokhiev’s selection of numbers from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet which concluded with an ear-shattering Death of Tybalt. Lang Lang was a stylish, if narcissistic, soloist in Ravel’s G major concerto, but the highlight was a shimmering, delectably balanced La Mer that made you realise how great the acoustics are in the Großes Festspielhaus.

The Vienna Phil has really taken a shine to Sokhiev, who conducts the New Year’s Concert for the first time next January. At Thursday’s press conference, he already promised some of the music Johann Strauss II composed for his eleven summer seasons performing in Pavlovsk, near St Petersburg. Looks like we’ll be charging our glasses with vodka to ring in 2027!

Today sees my final country house opera trip of the season. I try to visit the main festivals at least once each summer and this year I struck lucky, schlepping to ‘the four Gs’ – Glyndebourne, Garsington, Grange Park Opera and Grange Festival on multiple occasions – plus Longborough (where I finally saw Anthony Negus conducting).

Highlights included a promising start to GPO’s first Ring cycle, a very decent Eugene Onegin at Grange Festival and excellent revivals of Billy Budd (Glyndebourne), Don Carlo (GPO) and Der Rosenkavalier (Garsington). The real highlight though was the weather. Although temperatures soaring upwards of 30°C isn’t ideal for black tie, festivals are much more relaxed on dress code these days and, anyway, I’d much rather do battle with the heat than splash about in the rain.

And these are genuinely lovely locations to visit, especially in the sunshine, each seemingly more picturesque than the one before. I can rarely resist snapping the view, so here is a little photo montage of the best bits from my festival summer.

Glyndebourne

The mothership of the UK’s opera festivals. Set in the rolling Sussex Downs, the grounds are beautiful – a lake, lovingly attended gardens, the ha-ha to keep the sheep off your picnic – and it has a great theatre. The place is full of history. After the sad death of Dame Felicity Lott just before the season opened, they displayed a collection of her gowns in the Organ Room.

Garsington

Set in the Wormsley Estate, Garsington is an idyllic venue. When arriving, I always admire the bucolic scene: the cricket pitch and its mock-Tudor thatched pavilion, familiar from guest appearances in shows like Midsomer Murders; dragonflies buzzing over the lake; deer munching in the next field. The soaring red kites are an awesome sight too – less so when they dive-bomb your picnic. Dusk over Garsington can be very special.

Grange Park Opera

The higgledy-piggledy nature of the grounds is truly charming – a crinkle-crankle wall, anyone? – and as you wander through the orchard, the Theatre in the Woods is an impressive sight. The inside is still a bit basic (carpet would help tamp down the lively acoustic) but this year saw a new addition – a fairy-light chandelier that rises, Met Opera-like, just before the show begins.

Grange Festival

The Grange Festival is the eccentric aunt of the country house opera circuit – slightly shambolic and a pain to get to - but the plane tree standing in front of the Greek Revival mansion that is Northington Grange catches my breath every time. On a sunny day, it is picture-postcard perfect.

Longborough

I only visited Longborough Festival Opera for the first time last year (the ‘Hedgehog’ minibus from Moreton-in-Marsh railway station suddenly making it a lot more practical for non-drivers). The pink brick opera house is a mini tribute to Bayreuth – Wagner stands atop the roof, elevated higher than Mozart and Verdi – including a balcony where members of the orchestra will tootle a short fanfare to invite audiences back after the long interval.

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The recital itself was perfectly proportioned for a singer who spends more of her time treading the world’s great opera stages than recital platforms. A first half composed of songs by Italian composers – Puccini, Verdi and Martucci and a pair of salon gems by Paolo Tosti – followed by a second half featuring four Puccini arias, three of them – from Tosca, Bohème and Butterfly – absolute bangers. Freed from the constraints of a music stand, Yoncheva lived each role, scattering petals from a sunflower during “Se come voi piccina io fossi” from Le villi, blowing a handful at Martineau on the final line, “Non ti scordar di me!” (Forget me not!).

And the encores? Plucking another flower from one of the hall bouquets, she launched into a sultry Carmen habanera, teasing her audience, grabbing Martineau by the shoulder and reclining across his piano stool before directing the line “Mais si je t’aime, si je t’aime, Prends garde à toi !” at her husband, conductor Domingo Hindoyan, sitting in the Stalls.

And then, explaining that any French members of the audience may be keen to watch the World Cup quarter final about to begin, Yoncheva left us with Manon’s “Adieu notre petite table”, noting this was not really adieu, but just au revoir. A smile, a cheery wave to the audience and she was gone. Classy diva. Classy recital.

Commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where it premiered in 1910 under the baton of Arturo Toscanini, Fanciulla tells the story of Minnie, the gun-toting owner of the Polka Saloon, her love for Dick Johnson (aka bandit-on-the-run Ramerrez) and the jealous sheriff, Jack Rance. Minnie is not just a bar owner, but she acts as teacher, nurse, confidante and banker to the mining community in the Sierra Nevada, seeking their fortune in the 1849 California Gold Rush.

That 1910 Met cast included the legendary soprano Emmy Destinn as Minnie, tenor Enrico Caruso as Dick Johnson and baritone Pasquale Amato as Sheriff Jack Rance. As with Madama Butterfly, Puccini had found inspiration in a play by David Belasco. The choice of an American subject was unusual for European opera composers at the time, and Puccini approached it with remarkable seriousness, creating a musical world that evokes vast landscapes, frontier life and emotional isolation.

Yet Fanciulla doesn’t enjoy the same reputation as Puccini’s more celebrated operas. Apart from Johnson’s brief aria “Ch’ella mi creda”, it doesn’t contain any hit tunes, but perhaps finds Puccini at his most adventurous, even if his attempts at Americanisms – “Dooda, dooda, dooda, dooda, day!” – can seem jarringly cringeworthy. It’s interesting how nobody ever accuses Puccini of cultural appropriation when he sets his sights on the Wild West rather than the Far East. And unusually, Minnie escapes the fate of most of the composer’s heroines – Liù, Butterfly, Tosca, Angelica, Mimì, Manon: death. Quite the opposite. Minnie literally walks off into the sunset with the man she’s just saved from the noose. This unusually optimistic conclusion gives the opera a distinctive emotional glow.

I’m guilty of having previously dismissed Fanciulla to a certain extent, yet Martin Lloyd-Evans’ recent production at Opera Holland Park makes a brilliant case for the opera. In the slow-burn opening scene, which can sometimes come across as overlong and drab, his depiction of the mining community was deeply touching. Californian gold miners lived a pretty grim existence, many succumbing to scurvy, dissentry, cholera or diphtheria. Even Puccini’s comprimario characters felt boldly drawn here rather than a rough sketch, from minstrel Jake Wallace’s ballad to Jim Larkens’ homesick breakdown.

One reason Fanciulla is so rewarding is its heroine. Unlike Mimì or Butterfly or Liù, Minnie is not primarily defined by suffering or victimhood, but is in control of her own destiny. She is strong, independent, compassionate and respected by the rough miners who gather in her saloon. At the same time, she remains deeply human in her longing for love. Her courage reaches its peak in the Act 2 poker game, where Minnie risks everything to save Johnson, creating a dramatic climax that is both thrilling and emotionally satisfying.

The role is a tough sing and, lacking a knockout aria, hasn’t appealed to many sopranos. Even a lirico-spinto like Renata Tebaldi, who recorded it in the studio in 1958, was wary of the role’s dramatic demands, and performed it on stage just five times late in her career. In the publicity photo, Tebaldi’s towering updo makes her look like the sister of no-nonsense matriarch Elsie Tanner from Coronation Street! I can just imagine her ruling the roost at the Rover’s Return. Whisky per tutti!

Next season sees new productions at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Oper Zürich, Grand Théâtre de Genève and a return to the Met (oddly, a 2014 ENO staging by Richard Jones, so far from actually new). And with Piero Faggioni’s classic 1977 Covent Garden production rumoured for replacement – starring Asmik Grigorian – perhaps the moment of Fanciulla’s re-evaluation has arrived.

The weekend before the scheduled release Teatro Real’s Onegin – baritone Iurii Samoilov – starred in the Metropolitan Opera’s HD cinema broadcast alongside sought after soprano Asmik Grigorian. Samoilov was not meant to be singing the title role in New York, but he stepped in for the scheduled Igor Golovatenko. Is there a new Met DVD on the way, perhaps, and the Met wanted Samoilov exclusivity rights?

Deborah Warner’s staging already has a DG video release, from the production’s 2013 New York premiere. But that was conducted by Valery Gergiev and starred Anna Netrebko, both now verboten at the Met. Indeed, in the cinema trailers for this season’s Met in HD, the fleeting moments when you could see Netrebko’s Tatyana were shot from behind, so you couldn’t really identify her. Such is the petty extent to which the Met – or specifically Peter Gelb – wishes to distance the house from the Russian soprano.

Releases can sometimes be delayed, but the only previous time I can recall an opera video being completely pulled was Stefan Herheim’s Bayreuth Parsifal. How hard were EuroArts leant upon – or bought out – to kill this release at the eleventh hour?

If you’re intrigued by Loy’s production – and you should be – then Presto Classical currently has two copies of the Blu-ray still in stock (perhaps they didn’t get the memo?) or you can still watch it streamed on Medici TV.

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My interest was immediately piqued. I’m a Vivaldi nut. During lockdown, I listened to all his concertos – or at least all those that have been recorded – during my hour of state-sanctioned daily exercise (chronicled here). For Gramophone, I’ve just reviewed the latest release in Naïve’s Vivaldi Edition (we’re up to Vol. 75 now, the finishing post surely in sight).

But this film isn’t really about the Red Priest. It was inspired by Tiziano Scarpa’s 2008 novel Stabat Mater. Cecilia (Tecla Insolia) is one of the orphans, abandoned by her mother but harbouring hopes that one day she’ll return to reclaim her daughter. Cecilia plays violin in the Ospedale’s all-female orchestra, which plays behind a screen in church so as not to excite the male patrons. They wear crimson robes, winged bonnets (very Handmaid’s Tale) and, in public, black masks. Antonio Vivaldi (Michele Riondino) is hired as the new music teacher and Cecilia becomes his star pupil. But Cecilia has been promised in marriage to the nobleman Sanfermo once the war with the Turks is over, a marriage that will end her musical career at the orphanage.

Throughout the film we hear Cecilia improvising motifs we now recognise as Spring (Primavera) from The Four Seasons, left tantalisingly unperformed until the closing credits. All eight of us – yes, a niche audience for an Italian language film in Crouch End – in the tiny three-row Screen 5 stayed to listen to the whole first movement.

The film’s Baroque-inspired soundtrack is by Fabio Massimo Capogrosso, but there is plenty of original Vivaldi here, notably the Concerto for strings in G minor, RV 152, the delectable Largo, with pizzicato accompaniment, from the Violin Concerto in D major, RV 207, and from L’estro armonico we get the Concerto for two violins and cello in D minor, RV 565. The climax of the film comes with the premiere of Juditha triumphans, an oratorio commissioned to celebrate the victory of the Republic of Venice over the Turks during the siege of Corfu in 1716. It’s during this performance that Cecilia, sidelined due to a hand injury viciously inflicted by Sanfremo after it’s revealed she is no longer a virgin, makes her escape from the orphanage.

The film has had a mixed reception in the press (Peter Bradshaw panned it this week in The Guardian), but I enjoyed its gently paced, atmospheric quality. For opera audiences, it shows a different side to Michieletto’s art. Definitely worth catching.

The cycle was composed in 1840, the year he married Clara Wieck, known as the ‘Liederjahr’ (the year of song) during which he wrote 138 songs, including the song cycles Liederkreis, Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und -leben.

On Wednesday, I attended Patricia Nolz’s Wigmore Hall debut, a wonderfully programmed recital where Frauenliebe und -leben (Woman’s Love and Life) made up the second half. She’s a super young mezzo-soprano, whom I’ve seen several times in Vienna but also in Berlin at the end of March where she made a staggering role debut as Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, conducted by Christian Thielemann. She really lives her roles, so it was no surprise to see her so deeply engaged in the Frauenliebe und -leben texts. On Saturday, she opened Leeds Song with pianist Joseph Middleton in more or less the same programme. You can watch it here:

I then saw my second Frauenliebe in five days on Sunday when Kate Lindsey performed it… at the Staatsoper Hamburg! You may think that Schumann is an unlikely presence in an opera season. Tobias Kratzer clearly thinks differently. He opened his first season as the new Intendant with Schumann’s secular – and weird – oratorio Das Paradies und die Peri. Now Kratzer’s latest programme includes Frauenliebe und -leben as the first “act” in a triple bill, followed by Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Zemlinksy’s A Florentine Tragedy.

Mezzo Kate Lindsey performed the Schumann cycle as the “prologue” to Bluebeard. Kratzer sets the action in a drawing room in 1840 – the year it was composed – with Éric Le Sage at the piano and Lindsey on a sofa, living – and dying – as the wife of… you’ll have to read my review of this intriguing triple on Opera Now’s website to find out.

Here’s Staatsoper Hamburg’s trailer:

But, as so often, these things come in threes. I was recently commissioned by Gramophone to write an ‘Explorations’ piece, looking at a lesser-known work and offering a recommended recording. The work? Frauenliebe. Not Schumann’s but Carl Loewe’s. Come on, how many of you knew Loewe had written this cycle? Researching the piece was fascinating. The songs are based on the poems of Adelbert von Chamisso. Loewe, who composed his cycle four years before Schumann, sets all nine of these poems, including the final one, Traum der eignen Tage (Dream of my own time), in which the narrator blesses her granddaughter on her wedding day. Look out for the feature in a future issue (probably June). Meanwhile, here’s that final song in Loewe’s cycle, sung by Brigitte Fassbaender:

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The operatic world has been waiting for Lise Davidsen to sing Isolde since the moment in 2015 when she blew away the competition singing “Dich, teure Halle” from Tannhäuser in her clean sweep of the First Prize, Audience Prize and Birgit Nilsson Prize at the Operalia final. The Norwegian soprano has wisely bided her time, making her role debut in January in Barcelona before this new Metropolitan Opera production.

Davidsen was (predictably) utterly magnificent. Hers is a voice in a million and so secure is her technique, so powerful is her instrument, that she makes the whole thing look easy, like taking a Rolls Royce out for a Sunday afternoon spin and then cruising into the fast lane without anyone noticing a single gear change. Her intonation was rock solid across the three lengthy acts, with not a hint of tiring as she dispatched the Liebestod on a wave of rich tone.

Making his role debut as Tristan – no safety net of a Barcelona gig first – was the fearless Michael Spyres. Where Davidsen’s been destined for major Wagnerian roles since the start, Spyres has forged a different path, approaching it from a bel canto grounding which has very much informed his forays into Wagner. He’s a canny singer too and, knowing he’ll never be able to compete with Davidsen’s decibels, wisely doesn’t try. His Tristan was beautifully sung – none of Andreas Schager’s Heldentenor steel (London’s remarkable Siegfried) – but with burnished, baritonal timbre and sensitive phrasing. And he paced himself superbly, keeping enough in the tank to get through Act 3 unscathed.

Elsewhere, Ekaterina Gubanova was a dependable Brangäne, but Ryan Speedo Green did little with King Marke’s monologue. It’s worrying to hear that he’ll be the Met’s next Wotan rather than the classy Tomasz Konieczny, here singing Kurwenal quite gloriously.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin doesn’t treat Wagner’s score like some fragile relic, but a living, breathing entity, a full embrace, highlighting the drama if sometimes pushing the orchestra into overdrive at the expense of the voices (caveat: it’s difficult to judge balances on a video relay). It’s a lovely touch to have cor anglais principal Pedro R. Díaz playing, in costume, from the stage in Act 3.

“I can assure you that this production will be unlike anything anyone has seen at the Met or anywhere,” Peter Gelb told the New York Times earlier this month. Maybe he missed Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s 2003 Glyndebourne staging. If Gelb believes Yuval Sharon’s production is groundbreaking, he’s self-delusional.

In many ways Tristan und Isolde suits an abstract approach – let’s face it, not a lot happens. It’s more about emotion than action. And this staging often looks beautiful. Es Devlin’s set is essentially a tunnel in short sections that slide and interlock – great for projecting voices – with sections that open out like the aperture of a camera, often framed by video projections.

Sharon’s big idea is adding dancer/actor doubles for Tristan and Isolde, who spend the entire Act 1 sitting at a table with a giant sandglass, ready to down the love potion. Thankfully, the HD director largely focused on Spyres and Davidsen. I’m sure it would have been much more irritating in the opera house. Apart from that, Sharon’s Act 1 is pretty blank, as if abdicating himself of any directional responsibility. In London, Kosky also keeps things simple visually, but his direction teems with detail. Sharon seems content to just wallow in the music and the abstract imagery.

Act 2 fares little better, the overhead camera over the dining table homing in on a smashed dinner plate for an eternity as Marke realises he’s been betrayed. Yes, Yuval, we get the symbolism.

Sharon’s Act 3 is by far the most interesting. The wounded Tristan lies on the operating table, often replaced by the actor double as Spyres sings from the tunnel, almost as an “out of body” experience. The masterstroke is having Isolde arrive heavily pregnant, giving birth on the same table where Tristan is dying.

There’s something deeply moving about Lise Davidsen, returning from maternity leave where she had twin boys and who’s spoken movingly in the past weeks about how difficult that journey back to the stage has been, singing Isolde’s Liebestod not to the dead Tristan, but to her newborn child. Love, death and – here – rebirth.

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With the year drawing to a close, performers are sharing their own “2025 Wrapped” stories on social media, chronicling their performances, cities, countries visited etc so I figured it was time to check the diary and do a little musical accounting myself. It’s been a busy year, so buckle up…

Performances attended: 145 (102 reviewed)

• 80 operas (staged)

• 54 concerts

• 11 ballets

Places: London, Cardiff, Birmingham, Buxton, Vienna, Salzburg, Paris, Geneva, Leipzig, Munich, Amsterdam, Bergamo, Savonlinna, Saint-Jean-de-Luz (Festival Ravel), plus UK opera festivals Glyndebourne, Garsington, Grange Park Opera and Longborough.

The highlights were many and varied. Please note, the following hyperlinks to Opera Now, The Times and Gramophone are behind a paywall. Access to Bachtrack articles is free.

A Pair of Spades

Following that Collection feature, I was lucky to catch two superb Pique Dame performances in the flesh. A Vienna revival saw Anna Netrebko make her much anticipated role debut as Lisa and she lived up to all expectations, a glorious portrayal, and she was surrounded by an A-list cast, including ex-husband Yusif Eyvazov as Herman and Elena Zaremba as the Countess. On a smaller budget, Garsington Opera, which enjoyed a cracking festival summer, staged a new production by Jack Furness that I enjoyed immensely. It was a game of smoke and mirrors with designer Tom Piper utilising elements of his 2016 set for Eugene Onegin. Aaron Cawley’s Herman was vivid, but Diana Montague’s Countess was the real scene-stealer.

Tosca 125

In the 125th anniversary year of Puccini’s Tosca, there was a memorable glut of performances. Anna Netrebko made her return to Covent Garden in Oliver Mears’ new Royal Opera production, which I largely liked, swiftly followed by Natalya Romaniw, who was tremendous in Edward Dick’s thriller, newly acquired by Welsh National Opera. But my favourite Tosca of all these days is Margarethe Wallmann’s classic 1958 Wiener Staatsoper staging, which I saw twice this year: Sonya Yoncheva on rip-roaring form in February (which I didn’t review as I was interviewing her the next day), and a knockout trio of Elena Stikhina, Jonathan Tetelman – the Puccini tenor of today – and Ludovic Tézier in the September revival.

Plaster-casta diva and a batty Fledermaus

In Vienna, it was The Year of Norma, featuring not one, but two new productions of Bellini’s opera by the major houses which opened just seven days apart. Vasily Barkhatov’s war-torn factory setting at the Theater an der Wien boasted starry casting – Asmik Grigorian and Aigul Akhmetshina making role debuts as Norma and Adalgisa – while Cyril Teste’s at the Staatsoper looked beautiful, but he largely abandoned his very decent cast – Federica Lombardi superb in the title role – to their own devices.

Stefan Herheim had a very good year. His MusikTheater an der Wien deservedly won the International Opera Award for Best Opera Company. In the autumn, I thoroughly enjoyed his batty take on Die Fledermaus, the best of the Johann Strauss II 200 celebrations in the city. Herheim holds a metaphorical mirror up to his Viennese audience, his show reflecting Austria’s past from the glorious to the not so glorious, with Dr Falke as Adolf Hitler, Emperor Franz Josef as Frosch. I also adored (again) Herheim’s Degas-on-steroids staging of Verdi’s Les Vêpres siciliennes at the Royal Opera House, wonderfully conducted by Speranza Scappucci, with a fine cast led by Joyce El-Khoury and Ukrainian tenor Valentyn Dytiuk (so good I saw it twice).

The other Royal Opera treats this year were an outstanding revival of Jenůfa, featuring top Janáčekians Corinne Winters and Jakub Hrůša, and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s new opera, Festen, neither of which I reviewed, plus the new Walküre as Barrie Kosky’s Covent Garden Ring cycle continues.

Highlights from Salzburg, Amsterdam, Geneva and Paris

New productions that will stay for me for a long time include Peter Sellars’ One Morning Turns into an Eternity, the unexpected highlight of a strong Salzburg Festival, and Evgeny Titov’s moving production of Iolanta at the Staatsoper, a beautiful staging starring Sonya Yoncheva that plays Tchaikovsky’s opera more or less by the book… until its breathtaking denouement.

Staying with Tchaikovsky, I grabbed the rare chance to see The Maid of Orleans in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s production for Dutch National Opera, and was thrilled to find the controversial director on sympathetic form (unlike his Salzburg Giulio Cesare). A Dutch rail strike and a last minute flight cancellation prevented me from attending Kirill Serebrennikov’s incredibly powerful staging of Boris Godunov in June, but I’m pleased to have finally caught it via the invaluable streaming service OperaVision.

Risk-taking paid off in Kornél Mundruczó’s new Salome for Geneva, set in a New York penthouse bar, full of contemporary resonances. And I’ll not forget Barrie Kosky’s burlesque staging of Offenbach’s Les Brigands at the Palais Garnier. I’m still chuckling now.

Revival of the year came in Vienna, where sparkling mezzo Patricia Nolz stole the show as Günther Rennert’s 1966 Barbiere di Siviglia was taken out of mothballs to step in for the disintegrating sets of Herbert Fritsch’s 2021 production. The cast had an absolute ball. So did I.

Operatic turkeys

I had less of a wonderful time watching Lotte de Beer’s crass Nozze di Figaro at the Volksoper – one of those occasions where, had I not been reviewing, I’d have walked at the interval. And I’m told that Adele Thomas’ medieval pantomime Trovatore at the ROH is unlikely to return. Unsurprisingly, the singers hate it. I had the dubious honour of reviewing it twice, once in February and then a double-cast revival in July. Lucky me.

A dip into dance

Regrettably, I saw little dance in 2025, although Natalia Osipova and Lukas B Brændsrød sizzled in The Royal Ballet’s Onegin revival in June. The balletic highlight of the year though was the chance to review Alexei Ratmansky’s Callirhoe, the first new production brought in by Alessanda Ferri at the Wiener Staatsballett. Set to Khachaturian’s pulsating music (largely Gayane) and very well danced, it marked a thrilling opening to Ferri’s tenure.

Concert highlights

Concert highlights were fewer, but performances that will stay with me include Beth Taylor’s magnificent Sea Pictures with Edward Gardner and the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Elim Chan’s high voltage Shostakovich 10 with the BBC SO and Andris Nelsons driving through the Leningrad Symphony with the combined might of the Leipzig Gewandhaus and the Boston Symphony. Recital of the year came just last week with Hugh Cutting’s inventive, daring programme Morpheus with the Resound Ensemble at Wigmore Hall, containing everything from Purcell to Don McLean’s Vincent.

At the Musikverein, Karina Canellakis’ ripely dramatic reading of Death and Transfiguration with the Wiener Symphoniker was the best Strauss tone poem I’ve heard for years. And the London Symphony Orchestra’s concert performance of Salome – starring Asmik Grigorian, no less – contained some of the most thrilling singing and playing I heard all year… another one of those occasions where I immediately booked to see it again. Quite why there was no LSO Live recording is still a mystery. Big mistake. Huge.

Finally, this year was the 150th anniversary of the birth of Maurice Ravel. Three highlights included the chance to attend the wonderful festival held in his birthplace, lovingly curated by Bertrand Chamayou; a traversal of his complete solo piano music by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet at Wigmore Hall; and the opportunity to write the Gramophone cover story to mark the anniversary.

Before putting on the Decca disc, I was concerned about Yunchan Lim’s approach to The Seasons. His booklet note weighs down the collection with the misguided concept that this is someone in their final year, lost in a train of melancholy reminiscence. There’s all sorts of guff about love and loss, pain and rejection, bitterness and tears. October is the “Black Pearl” of the cycle, Feodor Chaliapin and Edith Piaf are referenced, etc.

Of all Tchaikovsky’s works, The Seasons – which would be more accurately titled as The Months – is perhaps the least likely to suit such hand-wringing. The composer was only 35 when he was commissioned by Nikolai Bernard to write 12 short piano pieces for the St Petersburg music publication Nouvellist – one per month – for readers to play at home. Bernard suggested the theme and the subtitle and Tchaikovsky readily agreed. It was a nice little earner and the result was salon music of the most charming kind.

Thankfully, Yunchan’s approach at the keyboard doesn’t reflect his baggy booklet concept. There are a few fussy moments – ritardandos in January’s By the Fireside are extended to a near standstill, March’s Song of the Lark is too lugubrious (he hears “tears of tragedy” here) – but, by and large, his readings are animated and swift. Yunchan’s cycle comes in at just over 44 minutes, the same as the excellent Pavel Kolesnikov (Hyperion), three minutes faster than the recent Bruce Liu (DG).

February’s Carnival will be familiar to balletomanes, one of several movements from The Seasons co-opted into John Cranko’s Onegin. Yunchan finds impish energy here. May’s White Nights teems with the joy and excitement of spring, the arpeggiated accompaniment like a folk guitar. In June’s Barcarolle, I like the way he brings the left hand into the conversation, the music flowing gently, with bell-like spread chords chiming sweetly at the end.

Yunchan is fleet-fingered in Autumn’s Harvest Song – possibly too rushed – and September’s The Hunt swaggers with martial bravado. Like Bruce Liu, staccatos are exaggerated at the start of November’s Troika, but his sforzandos in the central section mean that this sleigh ride is packed with incident, even if he pulls the tempi around a bit too much.

The suite’s most famous number is October’s Autumn Song – Lensky’s solo, if you know Cranko. It is marked Andante doloroso e molto cantabile so, to me, it still has to sing. Yunchan is not excessively slow here, much the same pace as Kolesnikov and Liu, but he’s heavier on the doloroso than the cantabile.

Overall, this is an enjoyable account, much preferable to Bruce Liu’s, which is too closely recorded and lacking in imagination, if not quite displacing Kolesnikov’s. And don’t dismiss Mikhail Pletnev’s dazzling Virgin recording (rather than his earlier, sluggish Melodiya reading).

Pletnev looms large over the second release here. His miraculous transcription of eleven numbers from The Sleeping Beauty was made when he was only 21 – the same year he won the International Tchaikovsky Competition – and is the crowning glory of Trifonov’s Tchaikovsky album. Trifonov, who also contributes to the booklet, although via an interview rather than a personal note, states that this suite is “not simply a piano reduction… it is a re-imagination of the musical material into a masterful piano work in its own right.” From the crystalline delicacy of The Silver Fairy and the garrulous The Canary Sings to the witty Puss-in-Boots and the White Cat, Trifonov is an animated narrator, recorded in quite wonderful piano sound in Mechanics Hall, Worcester, Massachusetts. The Andante (from the ballet’s Vision Scene) glows magnificently and the Adagio – which is from the Grand pas de deux, not the “Rose Adagio” – is unbelievably tender. Has Trifonov outdone Pletnev? Very possibly.

Trifonov’s programme, spread across two discs totalling 93 minutes, also includes the early Piano Sonata in C sharp minor, composed in Tchaikovsky’s final year at the St Petersburg Conservatory and not published until after his death. Its third movement will be familiar as it was later recycled as the Scherzo of the First Symphony, Winter Daydreams.

“Tchaikovsly was not a choleric, morose personality,” says Trifonov, and the other works on his album bring out the personal, private dimension to Tchaikovsky’s writing. The Theme and Variations in F major, the last of the Op.19 Morceaux, are beautifully done, Trifonov wearing his virtuosity lightly, but the main delight is the Children’s Album, a collection of 24 Schumannesque vignettes, some just 30 seconds long, summoning up childhood memories.

Trifonov’s playing is affectionate, but not sugary. There’s life to Galloping Hobbyhorse and the March of the Wooden Soldiers, tenderness to The Doll’s Illness followed by The Doll’s Funeral. I like the gradual acceleration to the folk melody Kamarinskaya and the hint of ornamentation to the Old French Song. Familiar from Swan Lake, the Neapolitan Song is nimbly dispatched and the witch Baba-Yaga scuttles along. Sweet Dreams, surely a tribute to Schumann’s Träumerei, tiptoes softly.

This is a classy product from DG, the booklet printed on thick paper, with Florian Karg’s illustrations painted from Dario Acosta’s press photos. The only thing that’s missing? The Seasons.

Yunchan Lim: The Seasons (Decca 4871021)
Daniil Trifonov: Tchaikovsky (Deutsche Grammophon 4867471)

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Modest Mussorgsky’s 1874 piano suite was composed in tribute to his friend, the artist Viktor Hartmann: ten “pictures” – or designs, in some cases – linked by an occasional promenade theme as the gallery viewer strolls from work to work. “My physiognomy,” Mussorgsky explained, “can be seen in the intermezzi.” Maurice Ravel, among others, orchestrated the work, but it’s the original piano guise that Ratmansky deploys for his ballet.

Color Study: Squares With Concentric Circles (1913) by Russian abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky forms the initial backdrop, which then morphs into abstract projections (Wendall K. Harrington) of swirls and squares and lines for each “picture”.

Ratmansky uses ten dancers, rarely all at once, more usually in pairs or small groupings. Adeline Andre’s diaphanous costumes are loose, flimsy silk tunics with abstract prints inspired by the Kandinsky. Each piece – and each Promenade – has its own character. Some of the dances are typically tongue-in-cheek, others are beautifully drawn: The Old Castle is a lovely pas de deux, filled with imagery of flight and soaring, the woman – Alina Cojocaru here, defying the years – swooping like a swallow in her partner’s arms before exiting on a high lift.

I love how Ratmansky confounds expectations. Gnomus, a grimacing nutcracker design, is given to a solo female dancer, exaggerated and angular. Bydło, the lumbering ox-cart, is given to four women, comical and light until bovine exhaustion sets in. And the Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks? Danced by the five men, scurrying intricate steps!

Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuÿle is an argumentative duet, Tuileries is quick and gossipy, Baba-Yaga ferocious. After these brief pictures – snapshots – Ratmansky builds to the grand finale, a ceremonial procession for The Great Gate of Kiev. The dancers file past each other, bowing deeply, the women – held aloft, upside down – kicking their legs like the bells in Mussorgsky's score.

In the closing bars, Ratmansky has now inserted a Ukrainian flag in the projections as a defiant gesture against Russia’s invasion. “What this war has taught me,” Ratmansky explains at the end of NYCB’s video below, “is that you can’t live in a bubble.”

But then came SJ’s Gramophone review of Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s cycle with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe (11/91), the first to marry historically-informed performance practice with modern instruments (barring natural trumpets). “A Beethoven cycle which manages to combine the shock of the new with an uncanny sense of familiarity,” Johnson enthused. “Listening to this set I was reminded over and over again how exciting it was to discover Beethoven’s symphonies for the first time – I’m not exaggerating.” I was sold. The Haitink sounded dull in comparison, so I ditched it. Harnoncourt would be “the one”.

Reading Richard Osborne, Rob Cowan et al in Gramophone kept temptation coming though. Roger Norrington and the London Classical Players joined the library, as I was keen to have a period instrument cycle. That opened the floodgates. I bought Claudio Abbado with the Berliner Philharmoniker because, hey, it’s the Berlin Phil. And then DG deleted that set and replaced it with the one recorded in concert in Rome, so that was added to the collection too. Then came Charles Mackerras, André Cluytens, David Zinman… I even gave Haitink another chance. His LSO Live cycle was excellent, adopting a few historically-informed practices. Now, my shelves groan with 30+ cycles (a few of them “accidental” acquisitions via big box purchases).

Last month, Antonello Manacorda and the Kammerakademie Potsdam joined the gang, mainly because I’d seen them give a terrific Seventh at the Elbphilharmonie in 2023, full of energy. But what is it about the Beethoven cycle which makes it so… collectible? What is the lure of “the nine”?

Beethoven certainly set the gold standard. Each symphony is a masterpiece – even the Haydnesque First and Second. There are no weak works, which is not a claim that could apply to other sets of nine, such as Dvořák, Bruckner or Schubert (I know, he only wrote eight really).

Several are among the greatest ever composed: the Eroica is arguably the work that broke the mould, defining what a symphony could encompass; Fate knocking on the door in the Fifth; the “apotheosis of the dance” Seventh; the balm of the Pastoral; Schiller’s message of universal brotherhood in the Ninth.

The record industry has long marketed Beethoven as the “must have” symphonic cycle in your collection, the Everest of classical music. Remember the Britannia Music Club, the mail-order company owned by PolyGram? When it wasn’t Solti’s Ring cycle being dangled as the carrot for subscribing, it was Herbert von Karajan’s mid-80s Beethoven. I guess the appeal was in having the symphonies in digital sound, but five discs of Beethoven always struck me as an uncompetitive deal compared to receiving a brick of Wagner as your freebie. As a critical side-note, Karajan’s last cycle is easily his worst, drowning in molasses. His first Berlin cycle (1963) is far preferable.

It helps that there are only nine symphonies, fitting snugly onto five discs (unlike Mahler, not known for his brevity). Almost every conductor worth his salt has recorded a cycle – yes, “his” salt rather than “her” salt for now, although Kristiina Poska is in pole position to become the first woman to record one (with the Flanders Symphony on Fuga Libera).

Why so many recordings? And why have so many conductors recorded them multiple times? As Osborne wrote, surveying available cycles back in 1978, “a complete Beethoven cycle remains one of the sternest of all musical challenges facing a conductor and an orchestra, testing an orchestra's corporate and individual skills to the utmost and demanding of the conductor's part a cogent response to a musical style as complex and as exact as any we have yet known.”

With such great music, it’s an Everest for performers and it’s tough for a single cycle to do justice to these masterworks. The Ninth is notoriously difficult to get right – the tempo of the Adagio, the quality of the vocal soloists and the chorus – and the Pastoral can be the Achilles heel for several.

It’s all subjective, of course. One of the characteristics of my favourite recent period instrument cycle – Jordi Savall with Le Concerts des Nations – is the machine-gun rattle of the timpani, which some people hated. But “the nine” can take different interpretative approaches. Since Harnoncourt, modern instrument orchestras have largely adopted “period manners” in their Beethoven, although not exclusively. The period instrument revolution has left Daniel Barenboim and Christian Thielemann unscathed, their readings glutinous or monumental depending on your viewpoint. Full-fat or lean and mean, swift or sturdy, old Ludwig can take it.

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It stars Swedish soprano Malin Byström, one of today’s leading exponents of the title role. I’ve loved her Salome since watching her at Covent Garden in 2018, notable for her singing the music (rather than screeching it) and for her remarkable pacing so she still had enough left in the tank for the taxing final scene. I love her timbre and her way with the text. This new recording is very good and would be highly recommendable… were it not for the fact that she has already recorded it (even better) before.

In 2017, Byström made her role debut in Ivo van Hove’s stylish new production at Dutch National Opera which ended with her bloodsoaked Salome caressing the entire body of Joachanaan (head very much still intact) in a giant silver bowl. The recording was released on DVD and on CD on the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra’s own label and, to put it bluntly, it’s an even stronger performance under the direction of Daniele Gatti, then the RCO’s Chief Conductor. Byström’s soprano, silvery rather than steely, makes Salome sound suitably young and precocious, with a cloudy, sultry lower register. For Gardner, Byström’s tone is slightly narrower at the top, with less of a silvery gleam and she now snatches at a few high notes.

The Amsterdam recording also benefits from the dramatic engagement of a staged performance (although there is zero stage noise), whereas in the Edinburgh concert performance, Byström sounds slightly less “enthralled” in the final scene. It’s marginal – and Byström fans will clearly need both, plus the DVD – but the earlier recording is the stronger one, not least for the company her Salome keeps.

Gardner’s cast is solid without being stellar. His standout is Gerhard Siegel’s slippery Herodes, animated, incisive with the text. Johan Reuter is vocally stretched as Jochanaan, his sinewy baritone needing more meat on the bone. As Herodias Katarina Dalayman’s mezzo sounds hollow, but Bror Magnus Tødenes is a youthful and ardent Narraboth and Hanna Hipp is full of foreboding as the Page (a role she also sings at DNO). Gatti has Evgeny Nikitin as a burly Jochanaan, with his gnarly, biting baritone. Lance Ryan is an excellent Herodes, even if he is upstaged by Doris Soffel’s brilliant, viperish Herodias.

The Bergen Philharmonic plays stylishly for Gardner, but turn to Gatti’s Concertgebouw and they fully embrace the lurid decadence of Strauss’ score. Listen, in the Dance of the Seven Veils, to their alluring portamentos, where the Bergen Phil are a touch shy. Or the orchestral response to Salome’s initial demand for Jochanaan’s head: Gardner’s players sound matter-of-fact where Gatti’s sound appalled.

Some of this is down to the respective engineering. The Chandos is recorded at a lower level – crank up the volume! – with voices embedded within the orchestra. Despite being confined to the pit, the Royal Concertgebouw is captured more vividly, with huge bass heft, in remarkably wide stereo. Happily, both are well presented. The Chandos release has a fine essay by Gavin Plumley, while the stylish RCO hardback book has glossy pages and contains production photos. And both include a libretto and translations (English and French on RCO, English only on Chandos).

Malin Byström (Salome), Johan Reuter (Jochanaan), Katarina Dalayman (Herodias), Gerhard Siegel (Herodes), Bror Magnus Tødenes (Narraboth), Hanna Hipp (Herodias's Page), Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra / Edward Gardner (Chandos CHSA5356(2))

Comparison:
Malin Byström (Salome), Doris Soffel (Herodias), Lance Ryan (Herodes), Evgeny Nikitin (Jochanaan), Peter Sonn (Narraboth) Hanna Hipp (Herodias's Page), Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra / Daniele Gatti (RCO18001)

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Rather than the usual clarinet slither, Guth begins with the tinkling sound of the Dance of the Seven Veils played on a music box. A little girl, dressed in a black velvet dress with a white collar, plays with a doll. Her face darkens, she rips off its arms and smashes it into the floor. We are in a stark Victorian mansion, set in the era of the opera’s composition. Guth reimagines Strauss’ opera as an intense fin de siècle thriller… but you don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to psychoanalyse this one.

As he does in many of his productions, Guth speculates beyond the libretto to imagine a backstory, a means of explaining a character’s behaviour, even if that runs counter to the opera’s traditional interpretation. This one works quite brilliantly. As in his Turandot (Vienna, 2023), he presents the title character as a victim of abuse. Salome has been sexually abused by her stepfather, Herodes, since childhood, incest which – judging by his actions at the start of the opera, dangling her white stocking – still continues.

Salome’s abuse has conditioned her into believing that sex will get her anything she wants. When she asks Narraboth to fetch Jochanaan from the cistern, she lays on her back and spreads her legs. She cannot comprehend that this same approach won’t work with Jochanaan and, when he rejects her, she doesn't know how to deal with it.

Étienne Pluss’ vast set makes full use of the Met’s stage lift. The cistern where Jochanaan is held prisoner is the mansion’s basement, Salome’s former nursery, dotted with childhood memorabilia. Salome is accompanied by half a dozen identically dressed “mini-me” clones. One sits sullenly, plucking the stuffing from her doll. Another rides a rocking horse into battle, waving a sword, Olaf Freese’s lighting creating a giant shadow (a familiar Guth tic). Some of rocafilm’s projections – snow? blood? – make little impact, at least on the cinema screen.

The Seven Veils are danced for Herodes, who wears a ram’s head as he is forced to watch a re-enactment of the ritual abuse inflicted upon her, rather like the play Hamlet stages to expose Claudius. Each Salome enters wearing a black veil which is removed – lifting the veil of secrecy – before they “dance” for Herodes’ double; the youngest holds a ballet pose to earn a sweetie, but successive Salomes grow increasingly traumatised by his physical threats until Salome No.7 – soprano Elsa van den Heever – rebels, takes the ram’s cane and stabs him.

Guth’s production was originally meant to open the 2021-22 season, starring Asmik Grigorian – a Met debut for both – but became a casualty of the pandemic reshuffle and was seen first at the co-producing Bolshoi Theatre in February 2021. When the Met severed relations with Moscow following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Guth’s staging had to be recreated from scratch.

Stepping into Grigorian’s shoes is no easy matter, but van den Heever threw herself into the action superbly. Her soprano is an alloy of iron and silver and her top notes sliced through the orchestra with ease, although her lower register lacked a little power, buried under the opulent playing of the Met Orchestra, Yannick Nézet-Séguin fully relishing the dissonance and decadence of Strauss’ overripe score.

Van den Heever’s disturbed Salome is childlike, mimicking gestures and replicating behaviour from her past. At one point, she jokes with an imaginary Herodes, putting a finger to her mouth to hush their “little secret”. She embraces Jochanaan’s head passionately, but not before she’s nuzzled into his neck cavity, smearing her mouth with his blood (much audience flinching around me in the cinema).

Chained in the basement and caked in chalk, Peter Mattei sang nobly as Jochanaan, his baritone still sounding incredibly smooth and beautiful (he turns 60 shortly). Piotr Buszewski sang cleanly as Narraboth, with Tamara Mumford an urgent page. Michelle DeYoung made Herodias less of a caricature than usual, slightly pale-voiced. Gerhard Siegel is still the finest Herodes around, his oily tenor suitably slippery. When he orders Salome to be killed, Herodes himself collapses dead, clutching his chest, leaving Salome to walk off into the moonlight. And probably straight onto Freud’s couch.

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The Dresdner Nachrichten concluded that Strauss had wanted to create “a sensation… something monstrous, stimulating the nerves in the extreme”, while Paul Pfitzner in the Musikalisches Wochenblatt described the “choice ugliness of the most garish disharmonies”. In the Musikalische Rundschau, Paul Zschorlich called the score a “labyrinth”, an “underbrush of dissonances” that would exhaust the listener, whose “ear finds no points of rest”. The audience, however, disagreed, awarding the premiere rapturous applause, insisting on 38 curtain calls.

Mahler was writing having witnessed the Austrian premiere on 16th May 1906 at the Stadttheater Graz, which was conducted by the composer. The starry audience included Arnold Schoenberg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Giacomo Puccini, Alban Berg and – allegedly – a 17-year old Adolf Hitler. Mahler’s praise continued. After seeing two performances in Berlin in January 1907, he concluded “I am firmly convinced that it is one of the greatest masterpieces of our time.” He was proved correct. Within two years of its premiere, Salome had been performed in fifty opera houses – a true succès de scandale. The composer later boasted that his royalties from Salome alone had enabled him to build his luxurious villa at Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria.

Salome was Strauss’ third opera. Neither of the first two – Guntram and Feuersnot – had been particularly successful. But it was a young Viennese poet, Anton Lindner, who aroused Strauss’ interest in Oscar Wilde’s notorious play Salomé (written in French) as a possible subject for his next opera. Wilde himself had been inspired by Gustave Moreau’s paintings, the same artworks that had inspired Jules Massenet’s opera Hérodiade.

Salome herself is not named in either of the gospel accounts of Matthew or Mark. She is merely described as the “daughter of Herodias” by Herod Philippus, whom she deserted for his half-brother, Herod Antipas. John the Baptist attacked this second marriage as incestuous, which led to his imprisonment by Herod in a cistern at Perea, east of the Dead Sea. At a lavish banquet on Herod’s birthday, Herodias’ daughter danced for the guests and Herod was so pleased that “he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask” (Matthew, 14:7). Herodias instructed her daughter to request the head of John the Baptist on a platter as her reward. Herod, the gospels tell us, was sorry, but kept his word. The executioner duly did his duty and the head was delivered to Herodias’ daughter, who gave it to her mother.

There is no mention in the Bible of any sexual desire for John, nor that Herod then ordered his stepdaughter’s death. These were inventions of Wilde’s creation. His Salomé was bloody, biblical and erotic – certainly a subject that appealed to fin de siècle sensibilities. But Wilde’s play flopped in Paris and in England it was banned by the Lord Chamberlain in 1892 due to its indecency in depicting biblical characters on stage. But in 1901 the play was given in a German translation in Breslau and in the following season it ran for 200 performances in Berlin at Max Reinhardt’s Kleines Theater, in a translation by Hedwig Lachmann.

Although Strauss had asked Lindner to send a few sample scenes of a libretto, he was only marginally impressed, much preferring Lachmann’s translation. By the time he went to Berlin to see the play for himself in 1903, Strauss had already started setting it to music. He completed his score in June 1905.

The premiere was set for Dresden later that year. Strauss warned the conductor Ernst von Schuch that the principals would need three months to study their roles. Leading soprano Marie Wittich only saw the score one month before the premiere… and straight away ran to complain to Cosima Wagner! She and her fellow singers were ready to resign at the first rehearsal, but tenor Karel Burian (Herodes) announced that he had already learnt his role by heart, thus defusing an impending strike.

Wittich remained difficult though, opposed to the “indecency” of the Dance of the Seven Veils, protesting “I won’t do that, I’m a decent woman!” Strauss was so vexed that he threatened to move the premiere to Leipzig or Vienna. At the premiere, a dancer was engaged to take the soprano’s place. Strauss later wrote to Hugo von Hofmannsthal that Salome was a great success... in spite of “Auntie Wittich”.

Despite the successes, Salome did not enjoy an easy voyage out into the world. Mahler failed to get her past the Vienna censor; the opera was not performed at the Staatsoper until 1918. It was banned in London in 1907, the British premiere coming in 1910 when Sir Thomas Beecham agreed to “modifications” which the conductor judged notable for their “hypocrisy and stupidity”. After the opera’s 1907 American premiere, private patrons intervened, scuppering two further performances. Sir Edward Elgar, in New York to conduct his oratorios, was asked to lead a prayer meeting to save the city from the “scourge of Salome”. He refused, describing Strauss as “the greatest genius of the age”.

The audacious score – Strauss asks for 105 orchestral players – certainly has its moments of brutality, but there are moments of great delicacy in its 100-minute span, creating a sultry atmosphere as descriptive as his famous tone poems. Indeed, Salome is like a tone poem, a “study in cancerous obsession” according to his biographer, Michael Kennedy. Strauss himself described Salome as “a scherzo with a fatal conclusion”. It’s easy to see – and to hear – how she’s held the operatic world in her hypnotic gaze ever since.

© Mark Pullinger

This essay originally appeared in a programme book of the New National Theatre, Tokyo

We’re in the same studio, a blank (black) canvas for Kosky and set designer Rufus Didwiszus to play with, later populated by the same charred World Ash Tree, logging in another appearance, a giant climbing frame belching fog. Where previously molten gold had seeped from its decayed trunk, Siegmund’s blood now pours.

Continue reading at Opera Now…

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And Nelsons’ Shostakovich symphony cycle with the Boston Symphony isn’t overtly political in flavour, despite starting out under the provocative banner ‘Shostakovich Under Stalin’s Shadow’. Nelsons eschews frenzied excess for more sober, introspective readings, focusing on the works’ musical qualities at broader tempi in a way that frequently reminds me of the Shostakovich recordings of his late Latvian compatriot, Mariss Jansons.

It’s been something of an accidental cycle. Back in 2015, it was initially announced as a series encompassing Symphonies 5 to 10, recorded in concert. Perhaps encouraged by the enthusiastic critical response – the first release, the Tenth Symphony, won a Gramophone Award in 2016 – it grew into a full symphony cycle. DG has now added recordings of all six concertos plus Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk – the opera which sparked Stalin’s displeasure leading to its denunciation in Pravda as “muddle instead of music” – and packaged it up in a bumper box of 19 CDs just in time for the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death.

That 50th anniversary is being marked by a mini-festival – ‘Decoding Shostakovich’ – in Boston this month, followed by a festival in Leipzig in May when Nelsons’ two orchestras – the Gewandhaus and the Boston Symphony – share a complete cycle between them. I’ll be hearing the Seventh, featuring the combined forces of both orchestras(!), as well as Lady Macbeth at Oper Leipzig, so was fascinated to delve into this DG box as prep.

The BSO doesn’t have a fabled history with Shostakovich. Their only recordings were live performances of the Fifth and Ninth under Serge Koussevitsky made in 1948 and 1946 (the US premiere) respectively. Nelsons’ performances of the Eleventh and the Chamber Symphony (Op.110a) were actually BSO firsts.

The recording of the Tenth was greeted with such rapture, I wonder if expectations weren’t set unfeasibly high. It’s a very good Tenth, scrupulously precise, faithful to every last hairpin dynamic and sforzando, but put the Allegro ‘portrait of Stalin’ second movement alongside Vasily Petrenko’s razor-sharp Royal Liverpool Philharmonic recording (Naxos) and you’ll hear the difference between musicians who are truly living the music as opposed to merely playing it. But the Boston playing is wonderful and the sound is plush and weighty. This is possibly the best engineered Shostakovich cycle out there.

Nelsons’ Tenth was originally coupled with a lowering Lady Macbeth Passacaglia which set up the symphony perfectly, especially as the two works bookend the ‘Stalin’s Shadow’ theme. Here, the 15 symphonies are presented in numerical order on 12 discs, shorn of couplings which are now lumped together on Disc 13. By the way, the vociferous applause that greeted the closing bars of the Tenth and Fifth Symphonies have been shorn in this release.

Nelsons’ Fifth is very good, especially the beautiful playing in the Largo, plus a rip-snorting finale. It was originally released with the Ninth – sprightly, with a dazzling closing Presto – and an Eighth which is sombre and tender, but where Nelsons doesn’t really venture into its darkest depths. The third release featured the Sixth, its long slow Largo suitably expansive before the circus high jinx of its two successors, and a Leningrad which feels just too beautiful, too sanitised. Does the war machine in the first movement threaten to obliterate everything in its path? Not really. Nelsons, as often elsewhere in this cycle, is at his best in the slow movement, the Adagio here – very slow at 20’33” – incredibly beautiful, its quality of stillness quite remarkable.

After those initial releases, they expanded their horizons towards the earlier and later symphonies. The Fourth is the best of the cycle, from its deadly, venomous opening to its desolate coda. Nelsons captures the eeriness of this most Mahlerian of symphonies and the playing is terrific, the fugato section in the first movement exciting as heck. If only they had sustained that level of performance across the whole cycle…

Of the early symphonies, the First is unusually weighty and serious, less Shostakovich the prankster than usual, while the Second and Third are given dutiful, let’s-complete-this-cycle readings, low on vigour.

The late symphonies are variable. The icy Eleventh – “a film score without a film” – is atmospheric, without matching Petrenko’s electrifying account. The Twelfth is taken really slowly, but does Nelsons’ lethargic tempo heighten the bombast in this pretty empty piece? It possibly makes it sound even more shallow. Babi Yar (No.13) is good, Matthias Goerne surprising with his depth of tone, even if he’s not as baleful as true basses in this harrowing work. The song cycle Fourteenth, my blind spot, is suitably weird, with bass Alexander Tsymbalyuk in biting form. Soprano Kristine Opolais is stretched at times, but whitens her tone well in Apollinaire’s The Suicide. The Fifteenth comes off very well, a reading of great clarity, wonderfully played – listen to the woodwinds at the start of the Allegretto. It’s a haunting, spectral performance, Nelsons revelling in the swan song’s enigmatic nature.

All in all, this Boston cycle is very fine, the hits outnumbering the misses, but not quite in the same league as the RLPO and Petrenko or other distinguished recent cycles such as the underrated Michael Sanderling and the Dresdner Philharmonie (Sony).

But this cycle has now been bolstered with the six concertos and Lady Macbeth, all new to the catalogue. The piano concertos (with Yuja Wang) and the cello concertos (Yo-Yo Ma) are being released separately on CD; for now the violin concertos (Baiba Skride) and the opera are download only unless you invest in this complete box.

Yuja Wang brings a tremendous sense of wit and sparkle to the piano concertos, aided and abetted by the incisive Thomas Rolfs (trumpet) in the First; their Keystone Cops finale is enormous fun. Wang finds just the right insouciance for the jaunty outer movements of the Second, framing a tender Andante. The disc is short measure at just 41 minutes, but the individual physical release will add some solo Shostakovich preludes and fugues not included here.

In contrast, both violin concertos are crammed onto a single disc. Baiba Skride’s playing is polished, her reading of the First much slower than her earlier recording (with Mikko Franck) apart from the Burlesque finale, which rollocks along here. Yo-Yo Ma is also more expansive in the First Cello Concerto than his earlier recording (with Eugene Ormandy, so 40 years earlier!) but the playing has an earthy attack that gets to the heart of the concerto. This is Ma’s first recording of the trickier-to-bring-off Second and he plays it admirably.

The most recent recording in this set is Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, recorded in concert in January 2024. Listeners not familiar with this lustful, satirical thriller are screwed – DG doesn’t supply texts, translations or even a synopsis. The performance is led by Kristine Opolais giving her all as an intense Katerina Izmailova, aided by bright-toned Brenden Gunnell as her insolent bit-of-rough, Sergey. Bass Günther Groissböck is a sleazy Boris, an animated Peter Hoare as his son, Zinovy, Katerina’s husband. But Nelsons is in no hurry. He takes 2 hours 55 minutes over the score – 20 minutes slower than Myung-whun Chung with Maria Ewing (DG), 25 minutes slower than the classic Mstislav Rostropovich with Galina Vishnevskaya (EMI), the latter wonderfully lurid. It’s as if Nelsons prefers the slow turn of the screw to Rostropovich’s cruder – and frankly more exciting – hammer blows. If Stalin had heard Nelsons’ account, perhaps he’d have let Shostakovich off the hook.

Shostakovich: Symphonies, Concertos, Lady Macbeth, Boston Symphony Orchestra / Andris Nelsons (19 CDs, DG 4866649)

© Mark Pullinger 2025

The plot is typically convoluted, so I hope you’re paying attention at the back. The opera opens with the wedding of Arsilda, Queen of Pontus, and Tamese, Prince of Cilicia… the only problem being that Tamese is missing, presumed drowned in a shipwreck, so his sister, Lisea, has disguised herself as her brother so that she can keep the throne within the family; therefore, it is Lisea who is officially presumed dead. Before this, she had been secretly engaged to Barzane, King of Lydia, who had, in the meantime, fallen in love with… you guessed it: Arsilda (he plans to abduct her). Prince Tamese, however, has survived and has returned incognito as a gardener. Only Lisea’s chambermaid, Mirinda, knows who she really is. Mirinda, of course, falls for the gardener who has saved Arsilda! Things get sticky in a tangled Baroque opera way, but fear not, it all ends happily with a double wedding.

Arsilda was an early Vivaldi opera, or dramma per musica, composed to a libretto by Domenico Lalli, whose plot borrows elements of Antonio Salvi’s libretto Rodelinda (Vivaldi’s opera precedes Handel’s) and the story of Queen Semiramis, who ruled Assyria in male disguise. It premiered at the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice in October 1716. Ironically, the Turin collection includes two versions of Vivaldi’s opera: a complete autograph score and, in the same folio, one which corresponds to the libretto of the version performed at the premiere.

In his booklet note, German scholar Reinhard Strohm highlights a spat between librettist and composer. In Lalli’s outspoken dedication of the libretto to the Count of Brochles, he does not sign his name and claims that Vivaldi’s “operetta” has no merit, partly due to “inadequacies on the part of the maestro who set the piece to music” and partly due to the aberrations in taste on the part of those who “wanted it so unreasonably altered”. Quite the flounce.

Strohm rejects the idea that the alterations were required by the Venetian censors, concluding that Vivaldi himself was probably responsible for the changes. He claims that there were changes to 13 of the opera’s 41 scenes. Frustratingly, it’s not entirely clear which version is used as the basis of Bernardo Ticci’s new edition for this recording, although the implication is that it’s the version that was premiered in 1716.

Unlike most of the Vivaldi Edition operas, this one has been recorded before, a 2005 release on CPO with Federico Maria Sardelli directing Modo Antiquo, which claimed to be the version originally conceived by Vivaldi and Lalli. Whichever version we have here, only one aria from Sardelli’s recording – Arsilda’s “lo sento in questo seno” – is replaced by another, “Del goder la bella speme”. There are four additional arias: “L’esser vinto non son le mie pene” (Barzane, Act 1); “Ah non so quel ch’io sento” (Barzane, Act 2); “Va superbo” (Tamese, Act 2); and the very brief “Cara gioia” (Lisea, Act 3).

Considering these minor differences, if you already have the CPO do you really need Naïve’s new account? In a word, yes. Singer for singer, with one slight caveat, Naïve’s cast is stronger, Marcon is a much more urgent, dramatic director than Sardelli and the recorded sound is brighter and more immediate.

The cast is led by two fine young mezzo-sopranos. As Arsilda, Benedetta Mazzucato has a warm tone. Her Act 2 aria “Son come farfalletta”, one of several arias referencing nature in the opera, displays wonderful lightness, while her flexibility in “Al nocchiero quant’è dolce quel pensiero” is impressive. As Lisea, Russian mezzo Vasilisa Berzhanskaya has a darker mezzo, a nice contrast, and all the vocal agility one would expect from a singer who’s established a reputation as a noted Rossinian.

Soaring above them both is sopranista Nicolò Balducci who relishes the vocal pyrotechnics as Barzane. He has an attractive voice – not as pure as Philippe Jaroussky but with bags of character. His Act 2 aria “Quell’ usignuolo”, where Vivaldi has Barzane and the orchestra chirruping like a nightingale, is one of the highlights of the recording. I wasn’t always impressed by Leonardo Coretllazzi’s undernourished tenor as Tamese, although Joseph Cornwell, his counterpart for Sardelli, sounds too ‘English choral tradition’ for Vivaldi.

Swiss soprano Marie Lys is a classy Mirinda, with a bell-like tone. She gets some wonderful arias including the charming “Io son quel gelsomino” to close Act 1, although this is an example of a rare misstep by Marcon, whose accompaniment plods in comparison to Sardelli. Soprano Shira Patchornik and bass José Coca Loza complete the cast ably in the minor roles of Nicandro and Cisardo.

Benedetta Mazzucato (Arsilda), Vasilisa Berzhanskaya (Lisea), Marie Lys (Mirinda), Shira Patchornik (Nicandro), José Coca Loza (Cisardo), Nicolò Balducci (Barzane), Leonardo Cortellazzi (Tamese) La Cetra Basel, Andrea Marcon (3 discs Naïve OP8676)

The Viennese “Battle of the Normas” was never intended as such. Vasily Barkhatov’s staging at Theater an der Wien was originally slated for 2020, but the pandemic forced a postponement until it could be squeezed into Asmik Grigorian’s busy diary, opening just six days before Cyril Teste’s production at the Staatsoper.

I reviewed the first night of each for Opera Now. Links below:

Plaster cast-a diva: it’s Norma or bust in Vienna (MusikTheater an der Wien)

Bouquets for Federica Lombardi in Cyril Teste’s aromatic Norma (Wiener Staatsoper)

Inevitably, comparisons are to be made. Regarding productions, Barkhatov wins hands down, although not everything works. With Norma robbed of any sacred responsibilities, the stakes are lowered, meaning the director can’t really end the opera with her self-immolation, but he still keeps the tension high in the closing pages. Teste seems incapable of generating any excitement, although his production looks very beautiful and will be easier to revive – an essential in a repertoire house.

When it comes to the casts, arguably each was singing in the wrong house. Grigorian, Aigul Akhmetshina and Freddie De Tommaso all have bigger voices than their Staatsoper counterparts. Indeed, De Tommaso sings Pollione in the first revival of Teste’s production in May, where he will doubtless project more than the stylish, but small-voiced Juan Diego Flórez.

Both Normas were making role debuts. Much as I admire Asmik Grigorian – her acting was typically outstanding – vocally, she is not best suited to bel canto and Federica Lombardi took the laurels. Aigul Akhmetshina was the better Adalgisa (by far); the disappointing Vasilisa Berzhanskaya sounded shrill at the top – she was singing at Bellini’s original pitch, the role composed for soprano Giulia Grisi – so I was surprised to learn, since submitting my review in the early hours of Sunday morning, that the mezzo is moving into soprano repertory.

Both basses were very fine, but it was especially wonderful to hear Ildebrando D’Arcangelo in such rich form, heralding, I hope, a move into the “grand old men” bass roles.

Want to judge the clash for yourself? Sunday’s third performance from Theater an der Wien was broadcast on ARTE (available until 24th April), while those in Austria – or in possession of a VPN – can watch the Staatsoper production streamed on ORF III on 23rd March.

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I’m much more likely to turn on the waterworks when listening to non-vocal music. Not because the music is sad or has poignant personal associations, but because it is so beautiful or the performance is so uplifting. Happy tears. The Budapest Festival Orchestra had me in bits last autumn because they played – and sang their encore – with such affection for the music and with such collegiate spirit. I felt it again this weekend at Wigmore Hall.

The Nash Ensemble celebrates its 60th anniversary this season. In the autumn, I interviewed its formidable founder, Amelia Freedman, for Score, the in-house Friends magazine. Now well into her 80s, she’s still the ensemble’s artistic director and talked about putting together a season of their favourite works and rediscoveries from the past six decades. I duly resolved to get along to some of their performances.

In November, there was a splendid evening of English chamber music. This weekend, Saturday was devoted to French music, followed by a Sunday morning “coffee concert” of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky (“coffee” meaning “Sherry” for most Wiggy patrons – the stampede of pensioners at the end to get to their tipple would put wildebeest to shame).

For Saturday evening’s two programmes, I had bought tickets in the first few rows. There’s something exciting about being so close to the action, caught in the crossfire between the players. Debussy’s Sonata for flute, viola and harp has long been a favourite chamber work of mine but seeing it from close quarters makes you realise just how violent some of the harp writing is (kudos to the brilliant Lucy Wakeford). Lars Anders Tomter, stepping in for his Nash colleague Lawrence Power, brought animation to the gruff viola role, and Philippa Davies played with panache, as she did in Syrinx, which was played off-stage, just as it was by Louis Fleury in its debut as La Flûte de Pan in play Psyché.

The richly varied main evening programme required lots of action for the Wiggy stage management, juggling the logistics of two grand pianos, a harp and a xylophone (the evening concluded with a zingy Carnival of the Animals) on its small platform. With a 22:15 finish time, the audience certainly wasn’t short-changed

Sunday’s morning recital was played to a packed house including Alfred Brendel, in to watch son Adrian (cello) just as he had been on Saturday evening. Tomter also took his seat in the hall with Power back in situ. Beethoven (the Second “Razumovsky” Quartet) was terrific, but it was the Tchaikovsky that got me.

The Souvenir de Florence was composed for string sextet – pairs of violins, violas and cellos – although it sometimes gets trotted out in a string orchestra arrangement, just as is the case with another favourite sextet, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht. I much prefer the chamber originals. Despite its title, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade is not a travelogue; one of its principal themes was jotted down while the composer was in Florence writing his opera Pique Dame. The finale is a hale and hearty Russian theme, thus a nice concert partner for the Razumovsky. “Italy is beginning to cast her magic spell on me,” Tchaikovsky wrote. “But in spite of the enjoyments of life in Italy, in spite of the good effect it has upon me – I am, and shall ever be, faithful to my Russia.”

Watching the Nash dig into this work with such vigour was thrilling. The opening is one of the most uplifting themes I know, guaranteed to raise my spirits. Although the principal melodies are given to Violin I, Viola I and Cello I, the other three parts are not neglected and there’s a real sense of a conversation throughout. I loved the players’ delight as the musical argument ricocheted between them – Brendel and fellow cellist Gemma Rosefield grinning at each other as they brought off a perfectly timed exchange – and the feeling that they were all having genuine fun up there. That was when my heart burst and the tears flowed.