The iconic egg-shaped structure of Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA) sits forbiddingly surrounded by a man-made lake. It’s easy to miss the entrance ramp which leads to the box office lobby, the electronic ticket readers and the

(Berliner Staatsoper im Schillertheater – 22 February 2015) It’s just another Sunday night in February at a Berlin opera house: Wolfgang Schaeuble, German Finance Minister, sits in the stalls with his wife and without visible security two days after negotiating

Richard Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) is an opera with unusually extensive chorus segments. And Director Tim Albery’s production at the Royal Opera House puts the chorus to unusually good use. Enthusiastic, dramatically intense and vocally polished, this

The casual operagoer would be forgiven for not being sure whether The Royal Opera House’s new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Ballo in Maschera was set in Boston, as it usually is, or in Stockholm, as it often is and was

The Hong Kong Philharmonic under Jaap van Zweden pulled off a real coup. Carefully marketing the orchestra’s first ever Rheingold, the first of the four operas of Richard Wagner’s Ring cycle that the orchestra is spacing out over four years

Hero maidens in the sky, taking the fallen warriors to their golden future – that’s the normal vision of the Valkyries. Don’t forget the sword and the winged helmet! After Das Rheingold, Wagner continued the story of The Ring of

Das Rheingold is a tale of greed and gold, unfulfilled promises and threats of destruction, culminating in a grand vision of Valhalla, somewhat tainted by how it was achieved. Over all hangs the ring and its destructive curse. In early

On Friday, 1 November, and Saturday, 2 November, the Hong Kong Philharmonic, under Lorin Maazel performed an evening of Wagner. But, it wasn’t Wagner as most of us knew it. The evening started with the Siegfried Idyll, famously given its