Exclusive Interviews

As part of our Central European coverage in the summer of 2018, Opera Lively interviewed in person Andreas Homoki in early July 2018 in Zurich. His fascinating answers are an interesting read. This interview is one of several done in that time period, together with reviews of sixteen live shows (three of them, at the Zurich Opera House). Our readers can consult the coverage portal by clicking [here], to find links to all those articles. We apologize for the delay in publishing this interview, which happened due to some unpredictable difficulties that are not the artist's fault, nor the opera house's. ...

Opera Lively interviewed in person Dominique Meyer, the Intendant (general director) of the Vienna State Opera, the man who currently occupies the position once held by Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Karl Böhm, and Herbert von Karajan. Speaking with the polite and soft-spoken administrator was a pleasure, and his interesting answers provide and inside view of the world-class operation of this magnificent company.

This interview is part of our Central Europe coverage trip in the summer of 2018, when we visited four countries, seven cities, and eight opera companies where we attended sixteen performances in as many days and interviewed twenty-one artists. We gathered this material in a portal with links to all articles, reviews, and interviews. Click [here] to consult the portal, or else, click on Read More or on the title of this article, to read Mr. Meyer's words.
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This interview is part of our Central Europe coverage trip in the summer of 2018, when we visited four countries, seven cities, and eight opera companies where we attended sixteen performances in as many days and interviewed twenty artists. We gathered this material in a portal with links to all articles and interviews. Click [here] to consult the portal.

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Meeting in person the charming and intelligent French soprano Julie Fuchs was a pleasure. Even more impressive was attending her phenomenal rendition of the title role in Calixto Bieito's new production of L'incoronazione di Poppea for Opernhaus Zürich. As our readers can see by consulting our review [clicking (here)] (numerous production pictures are included), we granted to this gifted singer a score of A+++, which is above our usual maximum of A++, and issued this enthusiastic comment:

"I have her CD "Yes!" (highly recommended, by the way), and I've seen her on DVD and some video clips, and already enjoyed her voice very ...

After our spectacular interview with Maestro Riccardo Muti, we are now publishing the words of another giant of Italian music, Salvatore Sciarrino, the most important living Italian composer. Mr. Sciarrino is delightful and possesses great erudition. He speaks in a very literary manner, and likely would have produced even more sophisticated words, but since the interview was conducted in Italian, Mr. Sciarrino said he tried to "keep it simple" so that the translation would be easier. Well, it wasn't simple... His answers are deep and meaningful. We believe this is one of the best interviews we ever published on Opera Lively. ...

[First of all, we have not included the diacritic marks in the title of this article because they cause problems with the URL links in our software; the correct spelling of the artist's name is Željko Lučić]

Opera Lively met the excellent baritone Željko Lučić in his dressing room backstage at the Metropolitan Opera House on January 23, 2018 for a pleasant chat about Tosca, which we later continued by email, resulting in this interesting dialogue-like interview you are about to read. The singer had just delivered another fabulous performance of the role of Scarpia, in the gorgeous Sir David McVicar new production that we attended in person and reviewed recently (read our review by clicking [here]), which was, four days later, shown worldwide on Met Live in HD, to universal acclaim.
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Opera Lively met the adorable and intelligent soprano Aleksandra Kurzak at the Press Lounge of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City for a lovely interview, on the occasion of her performance as Nedda in Pagliacci. Aleksandra is outspoken and a straight shooter, unafraid of courageously spelling out her ideas. This Poland-born singer is notable for being fast-thinking and for expressing herself very well in English, a language that is foreign to her. She is very self-confident and charming, and one can understand why her husband Roberto Alagna spoke so highly of her during his extraordinary interview with us (read it by clicking [here]). Also see our review of Aleksandra's Pagliacci by clicking [here]. Read Aleksandra's interesting answers to Opera Lively's questions, below. You'll see how she comes across as very genuine.
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This is our last piece that was still incomplete, for our extensive coverage of the 2016 Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. You can consult the numerous other interviews, reviews, and pictorial blogs in our coverage portal, by clicking [here]. This is not an Opera Lively exclusive interview, but rather a public Q&A session that we attended and recorded. The singer was so thorough in describing her experiences, that it became unnecessary to interview her in person, since she covered everything that we might have wanted to ask her. She particularly addressed in a very interesting way, how the stage director shaped the festival's production of Handel's oratorio Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, staged like an opera. Sabine sang - and very well - the main female role. ...

This interview was done two and a half years ago, on May 6, 2005, on the occasion of Stephen Costello's role in the Metropolitan Opera production of The Merry Widow. We contacted the singer and his agents repeatedly to get the final text reviewed. We sent the full text to then repeatedly. We never got an answer. Meanwhile the singer changed agents and we tried the new agent too, still to no avail. So, we never published it.

However, this is a pity because such interviews take a lot of preparation time, execution, transcribing, editing, and our readers deserve to have access to the text, which the artist had agreed upon providing. So we are belatedly considering that the lack of response is implicit indication that the agent had no desire to make any suggestions or corrections to the text, and we are publishing the interview today. However, we will not publicize this interview the usual way with Facebook and Twitter notices, but will simply paste it here on the website. If later the artist has any objection to any material here, he can use the Contact Us form (available by scrolling down to the bottom of any of our pages and clicking on the link) and request changes or deletions, and we'll oblige. ...

We are honored to have interviewed in person one of the most prominent figures in all of opera, the prestigious stage director and opera company/festival administrator Jürgen Flimm, who was the artistic director of the Salzburg Festival and the Intendant, among others, of the Berlin Staatsoper (which I would call one of the top five opera companies in the world). He just recently (in April 2018) passed the baton to his successor at the Berlin Staatsoper, Matthias Schulz. At the time, when we talked with him, he still held the position. We chatted about his production of Salvatore Sciarrino's contemporary opera Luci Mie Traditrice. This interview, then, is another one in this cycle (we also interviewed the two lead singers and the conductor for this performance). Unfortunately for various reasons that have nothing to do with the artist, there was a delay in transcribing and publishing this piece, for which we apologize. ...