Under Mr. Gilbert, the overall structure and shape of the opera came through with new vitality.
The European crisis has often been likened to a morality play — sinful southerners, virtuous northerners — but at times in Germany it has taken the shape of Wagnerian opera, with Germany cast as the dragon guarding its hoard of gold.
Luckily, Julian's own instincts about the shape of the opera were the same as mine – or perhaps he picked up on my hints – and we decided to have our opera start with the first play, but then move on to Antigone, and end with Oedipus at Colonus.
And I wondered if I would ever find a way to reconcile my passion for this beautiful, ancient art form of opera with my passion for social justice work... How did that experience shape or influence who you are now?
In ways seldom acknowledged, his vision has shaped the destiny of opera in America.
The large-scale late romantic symphony was to become one of the pillars on which his reputation was established, and launched his last Mahler series in Lucerne; two others followed in the shape of a contemporary opera – Giacomo Manzoni's Nuclear Death – and Bellini's I Capuleti e I Montecchi, both of which he subsequently conducted at La Scala.
Condition "OPERA": 10 excerpts of Opera singing.
Elsewhere on the Celtic fringe, Scottish Opera is bravely looking beyond its recent troubles to a more optimistic future, in the shape of five new operas sampled in bite-size, 15-minute segments under the title Five:15.
The city grew up during the rubber boom of the 19th century; its erstwhile prosperity is evident in the monumental shape of the Teatro Amazonas, the opera house that attracted the world's greatest artists.
Yet for all its breathtaking creativity and celebration of simultaneity, I think it unlikely this hide-and-seek opera is the shape of things to come – if only because shape is what it lacks.
