Opera Reviews
Written on Skin, Royal OperaSaturday, 14 January 2017
There’s a passage in Martin Crimp’s impeccable libretto for Written on Skin that describes a page of illuminated manuscript. The ink, he tells us, stays forever wet – alive with moist, fleshy, indecent human reality rather than dried into decorous fixity. As a metaphor for storytelling, it’s potent; as a description of George Benjamin’s score, it’s close to literal. Read more... |
Best of 2016: OperaThursday, 29 December 2016
It was the best and worst of years for English National Opera. Best, because principals, chorus and orchestra seem united in acclaiming their Music Director of 14 months, Mark Wigglesworth, for his work at a level most had only dreamed of (“from the bottom up,” said a cellist, contrasting it with the top-down approach of predecessor Edward Gardner). Read more... |
Der Rosenkavalier - Cast 2, Royal OperaFriday, 23 December 2016
Fiftysomething may well be the new 32, the age Strauss and Hofmannsthal made the central figure of the Marschallin in their "comedy for music" Der Rosenkavalier. Read more... |
Der Rosenkavalier, Royal OperaSunday, 18 December 2016
Der Rosenkavalier is an opera of thresholds. Characters are caught between states – girlhood and marriage, lover and lover-no-more, woman and whatever lies beyond sexuality and desirability – while around them a city and a nation are also poised on the brink, blocking out the noisy winds of change with waltzes that swirl ever more urgently through parquet ballrooms and gilded staterooms. Read more... |
El Niño, LSO, Adams, BarbicanMonday, 05 December 2016
Second and third times lucky: after the migraine-inducing multimedia overload of Peter Sellars's premiere production of El Niño, first seen in London in 2003 and subsequently excoriated in eloquent prose by the composer himself, John Adams's layered masterpiece has had two further performances here proving that the drama is all in the music. Vladimir Jurowski's 2013 Festival Hall... Read more... |
Das Rheingold, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, ManchesterThursday, 01 December 2016
With two of the biggest parts of the tetralogy already behind them, it might have seemed that Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé would aim simply at as near a perfect recording-cum-concert of Das Rheingold as possible, to get one more in the can and head for the final straight in a year or so’s time. Read more... |
Alice's Adventures Under Ground, BarbicanTuesday, 29 November 2016
Having musicalised the madness in the method of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, what would that wackiest of composers Gerald Barry turn to next? Why, dear child, what else but the method in madness of Lewis Carroll's Alice books. Except that method is mostly discarded in the shards of nonsense extracted from Carroll, and to be found only in the musical art of compression. Read more... |
Large, Hudson Shad, BBCSO, Gaffigan, BarbicanThursday, 24 November 2016
Has there ever been a more pertinent time to revive the poetic mythologies of Brecht and Weill? The writer said that the good-life-for-dollars city of Mahagonny was not exclusively an American state of mind and should be set in any country where it's performed. But the inverted morality tale of The Seven Deadly Sins explicitly references seven American cities. Read more... |
DiDonato, Il Pomo d'Oro, Emelyanchev, BarbicanWednesday, 23 November 2016
Most singers give recitals, and very nice they are too. But there are some – Bartoli, Florez, Netrebko, Terfel – who really put on a show. Mezzo Joyce DiDonato might just be the queen of this select band, and between the projections, smoke, sound effects, costume changes, lighting design and a solo dancer, her latest project throws down the gauntlet to any singer who thinks it’s enough just to learn the music and turn up in a clean frock. Read more... |
Manon Lescaut, Royal OperaWednesday, 23 November 2016
Jonathan Kent’s Manon Lescaut is back for a first revival at Covent Garden. It’s a gaudy affair, and seems calculated to provoke. But there are some interesting ideas here, and the musical standards remain high, even from the lesser-known names of this second-run cast. Read more... |
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