In June 2010 in the Zürich opera house I had a super box seat with some lovely people for a performance of the opera Der ferne Klang (The distant sound) by Franz Schreker (1878-1934). This is Schreker’s second opera. It had its world premiere in Frankfurt in 1912, but had Read More …
The Volksoper (meaning “People’s Opera”) in Vienna puts on about three hundred performances per year — nearly every evening from September through June — of operas, operettas, musicals and ballets. Like the Komische Oper in Berlin and the Gärtnerplatz opera house in Munich, the Volksoper has a policy of performing most their Read More …
While Salzburg is full of impressive and significant places to visit, like the fortress, the cathedral quarter, the festival halls and the two Mozart houses, I must admit that my favorite place in this town is the Landestheater (State Theatre), an outwardly inconspicuous building on Makartplatz that you might not Read More …
All you loyal readers of my Kaiserslautern post might recall that one of the operas I saw there was Jonny spielt auf by Ernst Krenek (1900-1991). This was the opera that sparked a remarkably sudden shift in the tastes of German-language opera-goers in 1927, away from the lavish Neo-Romantic extravaganzas of Read More …
Kaiserslautern, better known to my fellow Americans as K-Town, is a city of nearly a hundred thousand people — not counting the fifty thousand American and other NATO military personnel who are stationed nearby. Thanks to the new InterCityExpress rail connection, Kaiserslautern is now less than two and a half Read More …