All tagged Aviel Cahn

Einstein on the Beach – Glass – Grand Theatre Geneva

Einstein on the Beach – Glass – Grand Theatre Geneva

David Buchler
Grand Theatre Geneva

Aviel Cahn has arrived at the newly opened Geneva Opera House and in the first production under his control has taken the City and opera scene by storm.  This is a man of incredible pedigree having taken the Vlaanderen Opera – he was in charge for 10 years – to its peak in 2019 by obtaining the International Opera Award for Best Opera Company.  Instead of starting his new tenure in Geneva with a Puccini/Verdi/Strauss banker, his first opera is out of left field, Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Beach.

Opera Blog - Lohengrin

Opera Blog - Lohengrin

David Buchler
Royal Opera House

Lohengrin is a romantic three act opera, written by Richard Wagner and first performed in Weimar in 1850 under the patronage of King Ludwig.  It was indeed this patronage that gave Wagner the means and opportunity to compose and build a theatre for and stage his epic cycle, the Ring of the Nibelung. 

Das Wunder der Heliane at Vlaanderen Opera House Antwerp

Das Wunder der Heliane at Vlaanderen Opera House Antwerp

David Buchler

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born in 1897 in Austria/Hungary and died at the age of 60 in California.  He was a child prodigy, having a great European career until the rise of the Nazi regime forced him to flee to America in 1934.  Thereafter, he worked on some 16 Hollywood films, writing the scores and receiving two Oscars for his work.  His main classical work was written in Europe and this particularly applies to the opera, Das Wunder der Heliane (The Miracle of Heliane), which is written in three acts and was first performed at the Hamburg State Opera in October 1927. 

Sadko at Vlaanderen Opera in Ghent

Sadko at Vlaanderen Opera in Ghent

David Buchler

Sadko is an extraordinary opera, written by Rimsky Korsakov in 1891 and premiered in Moscow in 1898.  It is an opera rarely performed today, probably due to its production complexities and the difficulty of finding a tenor to sing the enormously complicated and high lying role of Sadko.