I confess that I have become fond of Halle. It is a town with a distinguished cultural and intellectual history and possesses a dignity which one does not always associate with cities of the former DDR. For lovers of Handel…
I was expecting great things from Stefan Herheim’s production of Xerxes at Düsseldorf – his Parsifal at Bayreuth had been both intellectually powerful and aesthetically pleasing. His Handel was a huge disappointment, simply because he would not take the opera…