Katherine Syer is Associate Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she regularly teaches courses on historical and contemporary opera staging.
Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, one of the first operas to open in the freshly renovated Staatsoper unter den Linden last winter, closes the s...
The life of Alessandro Stradella, the 17th-century composer whose colourful affairs paved the way to his contracted murder, inspired several nineteent...
Harry Kupfer’s new production of Macbeth at Berlin’s Staatsoper opens with a digital backdrop of a smoking landscape unsettled by occasional explosion...
Disclaimer: the highly successful premiere production of George Benjamin's opera Written on Skin (2012) is etched firmly in my memory. All the more st...
The chimera of the perfect family unit haunts Krzysztof Warlikowski's production of Wozzeck. On the unusually broad canvas of DNO's stage, all of the ...
Recent years have seen a growing number of oratorios, cantatas, and song cycles explored for their theatrical potential on stage, involving a range of...
Keith Warner's strongly conceived production of Don Giovanni (in revival with assistance from Michael Moxham) remains a public success in crowning ten...
The story of a fatally ill prostitute, burned by the self-interest of others when she pursues real love, was uncommonly contemporary when Verdi’s La T...
A newly commissioned opera about Hamlet runs the risk of being overburdened by Shakespeare’s profound handling of the material and its weighty legacy....
