Opera and culture blogger Leslie Barcza at barczablog looks ahead to Iphigenia in Tauris, dubbing the team of Pablo Heras-Casado, Robert Carsen, Susan Graham and Russell Braun "the Fantastic Four." Check out the video above for a preview of the production as it appeared in Madrid, also starring Susan Graham (note: our production will have a different cast but the same sets, costumes, and staging).

Another Toronto-based opera blogger, Lydia Perovic at Definitely the Opera, looks ahead a little further to Love from Afar, describing the experience of encountering the opera for the first time on DVD. She singles out her favourite moment, when the Pilgrim sings a poem written by the troubador Jaufré to the princess Clémence: 

Saariaho sets the troubadour’s actual poem to medieval and renaissance musical vocabulary—makes it sound like it might have sounded then but of course never neglecting a modernist, contemporary prism.

Alexander Neef has a new blog post about his time at the Salzburg and Santa Fe festivals.