<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd"
>

<channel>
	<title>Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts &#187; Opera</title>
	<atom:link href="http://berkshirereview.net/category/music/opera/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://berkshirereview.net</link>
	<description>Classical Music, Opera, Theatre, Photography, Art</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Sun, 28 Nov 2010 16:03:34 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en</language>
	<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	<generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1</generator>
<!-- podcast_generator="Blubrry PowerPress/1.0.11" mode="advanced" entry="normal" -->
	<itunes:summary>Classical Music, Opera, Theatre, Photography, Art</itunes:summary>
	<itunes:author>Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts</itunes:author>
	<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
	<itunes:image href="http://www.berkshirereview.net/images/BR7itunes.png" />
	<itunes:owner>
		<itunes:name>Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts</itunes:name>
		<itunes:email>editor@berkshirereview.net</itunes:email>
	</itunes:owner>
	<managingEditor>editor@berkshirereview.net (Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts)</managingEditor>
	<copyright>&#xA9; 2010 Michael Miller</copyright>
	<itunes:subtitle>A Podcast from the Berkshire Review for the Arts</itunes:subtitle>
	<itunes:keywords>classical music, opera, theatre, dance, art, photography, literature, travel, food, wine</itunes:keywords>
	<image>
		<title>Berkshire Review, an International Journal for the Arts &#187; Opera</title>
		<url>http://www.berkshirereview.net/images/BRbloglogo.jpg</url>
		<link>http://berkshirereview.net/category/music/opera/</link>
	</image>
	<itunes:category text="Arts" />
	<itunes:category text="Music" />
	<itunes:category text="Arts">
		<itunes:category text="Performing Arts" />
	</itunes:category>
		<item>
		<title>Opera America Launches the North American Opera Journal, an online scholarly journal about opera in the Western Hemisphere.</title>
		<link>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/opera-america-north-american-opera-journal-naoj/</link>
		<comments>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/opera-america-north-american-opera-journal-naoj/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Nov 2010 19:54:48 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>The Editor</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Upcoming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[concert opera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Elie Siegmeister]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gershwin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Leontyne Price]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[North American Opera Journal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[OPERA America]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://berkshirereview.net/?p=8790</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I am quite excited to announce the publication of the inaugual issue of the North American Opera Journal (NAOJ), not least for the purely egocentric reason that it contains an article of my own about concert opera in America, above all, its musical and dramative function in our opera-going lives. It also contains “Porgy and [...]]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/opera-america-north-american-opera-journal-naoj/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>2</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Boston Lyric Opera, Tosca, November 16th, Shubert Theater</title>
		<link>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/boston-lyric-opera-tosca/</link>
		<comments>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/boston-lyric-opera-tosca/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 23 Nov 2010 05:43:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Charles Warren</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andrew Bisantz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bradley Garvin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Diego Torre]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Giacomo Puccini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jill Gardner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tosca]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://berkshirereview.net/?p=8776</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[It has been interesting to see Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Puccini’s Tosca just a few weeks after seeing Opera Boston’s production of Beethoven’s Fidelio, just down the street at the Cutler Majestic Theater. The two operas, in their very different ways, invoke a powerful atmosphere of political repression — the world in which everyone lives, the trap that everyone is caught in, the air that everyone breathes — and in both cases a woman at the center of things wreaks havoc with the status quo. Kierkegaard, writing about Mozart’s Don Giovanni, says that music is by nature seductive and thus that Mozart had found the perfect subject — seduction — for music drama to spin out and reflect upon.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/boston-lyric-opera-tosca/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Farewell to Tankred Dorst’s Bayreuth Ring</title>
		<link>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/tankred-dorst-bayreuth-ring-2010/</link>
		<comments>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/tankred-dorst-bayreuth-ring-2010/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 22 Nov 2010 21:09:59 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Miller</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[At the Bayreuth Festival]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Albert Dohmen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andrew Shore]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Arnold Bezuyen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bayreuther Festspiele]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian Thielemann]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Der Ring des NIbelungen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Edith Haller]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Johan Botha]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kwangchul Youn]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Richard Wagner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tankred Dorst]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://berkshirereview.net/?p=7947</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[As much as I might enjoy the paradox in seeking out real situations that recall a work which is for many the ultimate in escapism, I admired Tankred Dorst's efforts to bring Wagner's mythology into our own world. Dorst recognizes that mythology and the divine are present everywhere, largely because of the consistency of human behavior.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/tankred-dorst-bayreuth-ring-2010/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Fellini and Rigoletto</title>
		<link>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/fellini-and-rigoletto/</link>
		<comments>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/fellini-and-rigoletto/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Nov 2010 02:20:09 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Miller</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Federico Fellini]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Francesco Maria Piave]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Giuseppe Verdi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opera Au]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sydney Opera House]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Victor Hugo]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Warwick Fyfe]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://berkshirereview.net/?p=8563</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[In a way this production is better Fellini than Fellini. Allowing influence from his films without being overly enamoured of them, Director Elijah Moshinsky manages to draw the opera into the modern era while intensifying Verdi's tight drama. It would have been easy to let the great filmmaker's sardonic sense of humour to infiltrate the opera and mock or belittle the characters to avoid falling too deeply into them, but on the contrary, the company seemed almost always to be sensitive to the characters. Verdi's creation is remarkable how it holds such an intense dramatic tension for so long and with a story which could easily seem an uphill slog. He also manages somehow to keep some sympathy for Rigoletto and ambiguity for the Duke despite their despicable actions. As for the curse, though it is Monterone who first vocalises it, it is really Rigoletto who brings it down on himself.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/fellini-and-rigoletto/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Opera Australia&#8217;s Der Rosenkavalier</title>
		<link>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/opera-australias-der-rosenkavalier/</link>
		<comments>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/opera-australias-der-rosenkavalier/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Nov 2010 04:54:04 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Miller</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Der Rosenkavalier]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hugo von Hofmannsthal]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opera Australia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Richard Strauss]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sigmund Freud]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stanley Kubrick]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sydney Opera House]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Vienna]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Wien]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://berkshirereview.net/?p=8398</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Though one hundred years old and a comedy set in 1740's Vienna, Der Rosenkavalier is still fresh. This is partly because the opera is timeless because, as Robert Gibson and Andrew Riemer's interesting program notes point out, it is an anachronistic mixture of different bits of Viennese cultural. For instance one can nitpick the fact the romantic waltzes Richard Strauss incorporated into the opera's music and plot wouldn't exist until the 19th Century (they were barely dancing l'Allemande with linked hands in the mid 18th Century). Thus the opera is about as logical and historically accurate as a myth is --  it is a rich Dobos torte (whose recipe Dobos donated to the Budapest Pastry and Honey-bread Makers' Guild five years before the opera's première, for what it's worth) of many integrated layers, some chocolate, some nutty, some sugary, and some disturbing, ashy and mawkish. Present also is something of Sigmund Freud's contemporaneous Vienna, not just in the way we see how his patients' inherited neuroses manifested themselves some generations prior, but also as psychology as one of the last frontiers of the enlightenment. The famous final duet is to be sung "träumerisch": the young hero Octavian sings "Ist ein Traum..." just as the "secret of his dream is revealed" (see photo of tablet below). He wakes up from the intense love affair with the Marschallin and realises the true nature of his feelings. This happens only after he has convinced his rival the Baron Ochs of his insanity by simulating hallucinations in a kind of upside down abreaction in the form of a Viennese masked ball. Octavian awakens to the realisation that his love for the Marschallin is "mere" warm friendship and discovers true love for the young Sophie who is fresh from the convent. He had refused to face the dawn in Act I, but by Act III he comes to act on the dreams, or at least the strange events, of the intervening scenes in which he undergoes two transformations to the opposite sex, encounters a symbolic silver rose, tries to duel Ochs and sets up said masked ball, before fixing his and Sophie's lives. Octavian, knightly and hot headed though he is, has a manly grace. He forsakes brute force in the end to find a third alternative to his problems, which should be relevant today when the beastly Baron Ochs' style of greed of is often valued over character, civility and proper thinking. Or at least relevant to those who more reasonably mistake romantic love for friendship or believe one necessarily precludes the other for all time.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/opera-australias-der-rosenkavalier/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Openings: The Boston Season begins.</title>
		<link>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/boston-symphony-opera-boston-emmanuel-paramount/</link>
		<comments>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/boston-symphony-opera-boston-emmanuel-paramount/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 02 Nov 2010 06:25:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Charles Warren</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Film]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Emmanuel Music]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fritz Lang]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Gil Rose]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[James Levine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jean-Luc Godard]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Josef von Sternberg]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ludwig van Beethoven]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opera Boston]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Paramount Theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ryan Turner]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://berkshirereview.net/?p=8348</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Boston musical season is now rolling along, with almost too many good things occurring to keep up with. The best news, and a great relief, has been the return of music director James Levine to the Boston Symphony Orchestra after many months off for back surgery and recuperation. Levine looks older, with more loose flesh around the face, and he walks onstage and off carefully with a cane (though at moments he just rests it on his shoulder and goes securely on). He seems to feel good, and once seated and starting to conduct shows great animation and involvement, indeed passionate involvement, in the work at hand. He has the orchestra playing spectacularly. He has really taken them beyond themselves, and they know it and seem to feel proud of it, as they should.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/11/boston-symphony-opera-boston-emmanuel-paramount/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Le Nozze di Figaro in Sydney</title>
		<link>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/10/le-nozze-di-figaro-in-sydney/</link>
		<comments>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/10/le-nozze-di-figaro-in-sydney/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 29 Oct 2010 02:07:43 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Andrew Miller</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anthony Legge]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Le nozze di Figaro]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mozart]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Neil Armfield]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Opera Australia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sydney Opera House]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://berkshirereview.net/?p=8193</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I usually don't like to pick favourites, but of the Mozart operas it's hard to deny Le Nozze di Figaro. As such it has become familiar without become at all tired, and has probably sublimated a rather particular image of itself in my mind's eye and ear. The story of love giving way to jealousy, and then despair, and finally forgiveness, under the roof of an aristo ripe for Revolution, is bound to develop a thin farcical crust, but it never seemed a straight comedy, let alone a farce, to me. The characters are so genuine, even the myriad of supporting roles are so strong, that it's easy to sympathise with their harrowing trials. I see the opera more as the Orpheus and Eurydice story with a happy ending which makes sense. It also lovingly portrays the noble and logical humanist belief that (to paraphrase John F. Kennedy) it is not impossible for human beings to solve problems that they themselves created. No parts for any God or gods nor even Cupid here. This production, directed by Neil Armfield perhaps wasn't exactly my idea of Figaro or quite sat on my sense of humour, but it did try some new things. Armfield does try to play it for laughs by filling the opera with over-the-top physical comedy, but he often risks hamminess. It is hard to keep up that kind of farce for over three hours and he doesn't always succeed in creating dark comedy in putting a fluff of laughter on violent, frightening or dark situations. He never ruins the comedy intrinsic to the libretto or the music, in fact at his best moments he even compliments this by adding detail to the scene with subtler acting in the background.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/10/le-nozze-di-figaro-in-sydney/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>A New Boris Godunov at the Met</title>
		<link>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/10/mussorgsky-boris-godunov-metropolitan-opera-gergiev/</link>
		<comments>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/10/mussorgsky-boris-godunov-metropolitan-opera-gergiev/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 23 Oct 2010 18:27:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Miller</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Opera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Andrey Popov]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ekaterina Semenchuk]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Evgeny Nikitin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[historical opera]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[history]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Peter Stein]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[René Pape]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Valery Gergiev]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://berkshirereview.net/?p=8164</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Today science fiction seems to have replaced history as the field in which the great truths of our inner and social lives are reflected, and historicism, as it evolved in the nineteenth century, is no longer a tangible part of our world. This is not to say that the discipline has died out or even declined, but the historical perspective which for a century or so stood as the foundation of people’s perception of their world, became a branch of philosophy, and permeated fiction, poetry, and theatre is no longer so essential to us. And this, in turn, is not to say that great history is no longer being written, or that people don’t reach for historical books with some urgency, or that historical fiction is no longer popular. Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov is a powerful case in point. It even stands apart from the rest of nineteenth century historical opera in the seriousness of the composer-librettist’s faith in history as a potent subject in itself.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/10/mussorgsky-boris-godunov-metropolitan-opera-gergiev/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>3</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Katharina Wagner&#8217;s Die Meistersinger, now in its Fourth Year at Bayreuth</title>
		<link>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/10/katharina-wagner-meistersinger-bayreuth/</link>
		<comments>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/10/katharina-wagner-meistersinger-bayreuth/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 08 Oct 2010 17:56:41 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Michael Miller</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[At the Bayreuth Festival]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Summer Retrospective]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bayreuther Festspiele]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[James Rutherford]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Katharina Wagner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Klaus Florian Vogt]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Michaela Kaune]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Richard Wagner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sebastian Weigle]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://berkshirereview.net/?p=8024</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I won't even say that I wish that, in beginning with Katharina Wagner's production of Die Meistersinger, I was starting on a cheerful note. Nothing of the kind. Katharina has studiously avoided her great grandfather's romanticized Nürnberg, where great artistic, literary, and musical achievement lurked around every corner, where the citizens dressed colorfully, where the men engaged in witty exchanges, while the girls joyfully gave themselves over the dancing, if not to their young men, at every opportunity. She has, rather, chosen to focus on the repressive nature of this conservative society, as embodied in the guild system, the obsessive power of routine in daily life, its neuroses, and, yes, its nightmares. Having a certain penchant for black humor and oddity, I entered with pleasure into my five-hour visit to this frightening and pitiable world, and I laughed, quite a bit, which, I should hope, is the desired result of any Meistersinger production. If my laughter was a trifle sour at times, it's not entirely alien from the sarcastic wit of Wagner's libretto. Hence, I am pleased to say that Katharina Wagner won her war, buoyed up by a splendid vocal, orchestral, and comedic performance, which had its own vigorous life, no matter how strange the goings-on on stage. And, if one is open-minded enough not to resist these, one can expect to gain a fair bit of insight into human nature, history, and Richard Wagner's comic masterpiece.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/10/katharina-wagner-meistersinger-bayreuth/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Wagner and Masks</title>
		<link>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/10/wagner-masks/</link>
		<comments>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/10/wagner-masks/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 03 Oct 2010 03:56:49 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Katherine Syer</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Wagner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Achim Freyer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Die Feen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lohengrin]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Mexico City Ring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Richard Wagner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Riga Ring]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ring des Nibelungen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ruth Berghaus]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Sergio Vela]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stephan Herheim]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://berkshirereview.net/?p=7707</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The production aesthetics of the recent Los Angeles Ring set it far apart from any other North American production of Wagner’s tetralogy to date. One aspect that has divided audiences and performers alike is the director/designer Achim Freyer’s ubiquitous use of masks and puppet forms. Freyer is not the only director to resort in the past quarter century to such devices, which have gained in popularity in opera/theatre production more generally. In the Ring, Wagner himself never called for masks for his singers. His theoretical writings nevertheless alert us to ways he thought about masks and his keen interest in matters of disguise and deception — core elements of the Ring dramas. Many modern critics are appalled by the use of masks for opera singers, both for aesthetic and vocal reasons, and believe that it is antithetical to Wagner’s dramaturgy. Wagner’s theoretical interest in masks undermines this critical stance. Simultaneously, contemporary directors have discovered in masks a powerful expressive tool that reaches well beyond what Wagner recognized as the boundaries of dramatically suggestive costuming.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://berkshirereview.net/2010/10/wagner-masks/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Minified using disk
Page Caching using disk (enhanced)
Database Caching 27/50 queries in 0.088 seconds using disk

Served from: berkshirereview.net @ 2010-11-28 22:20:22 -->