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Review: Trauma in Two Nights, as SALOME follows TURANDOT to the Analyst’s Couch in Vienna
I couldn’t help but wondering whether the scheduling last week of two recent productions at the Vienna State Opera, Claus Guth’s TURANDOT and Cyril Teste’s SALOME, on subsequent nights had anything more than the availability of the stars behind it. After all, both portrayed the title characters as abused women scarred by powerful men—not exactly the business-as-usual for these works by Puccini and Strauss, respectively—in pared-down productions that hearkened to the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, as well as to #MeToo.
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Opera Theatre of St. Louis Announces Their 50th Anniversary Festival Season
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL) announced repertory and celebrations for a landmark 50th season in 2025, celebrating five decades of artistic innovation and discovery since the company’s founding in 1976. The 2025 Festival Season opens on May 24, 2025, with Johann Strauss II’s effervescent Die Fledermaus, which has not been seen at Opera Theatre since 1989. The season continues with the company’s 44th world premiere, This House, with music by Ricky Ian Gordon and libretto by Pulitzer Prize-winner Lynn Nottage and her daughter Ruby Aiyo Gerber. Next, Opera Theatre will present an all-new staging of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale — the very first opera that the company ever performed. Britten’s enchanting adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream rounds out the season. In addition to four mainstage productions, Opera Theatre will continue to present the annual young artist showcase, Center Stage. This concert shines a spotlight on the members of OTSL’s highly selective Young Artist Programs, accompanied onstage by members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, which has served as OTSL’s Festival Season orchestra since 1978.
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Review: In Freud’s Vienna, Grigorian Thrills as Traumatized TURANDOT under Kober
Perhaps it’s only fitting in a town that’s known for art, music and psychoanalysis (and maybe a little whipped cream on the side), that the Vienna State Opera’s production of Puccini’s TURANDOT—with the stunning soprano Asmik Grigorian in the title role—features a traumatized characterization of the title role, with the fine Russian tenor Ivan Gyngazov as Calaf.
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