Opera Reviews

Prom 45: The Midsummer Marriage, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Davis

Geoff Brown Saturday, 17 August 2013

Jeremy Paxman’s beard may have been a wonder and a talking point for five days, but Michael Tippett’s opera The Midsummer Marriage beats it by almost 60 years. Ecstatic, visionary, energetic music, yes indeed. But, oh, the composer’s libretto! The Magic Flute, T. S.

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Fidelio, Opéra de Lyon, Festival Theatre, Edinburgh

Roderic Dunnett Tuesday, 13 August 2013

When first seen at Serge Dorny’s Opéra de Lyon in March-April this year, American Gary Hill’s unusual vision of Beethoven’s Fidelio could be recognised immediately as concept opera: drama where a director’s “idea” largely takes over the story. Hill directs (up to a point), and conceived the mesmerising projections that dominated the stage (realised, with jaw-dropping skill, by his technical assistant).

Billy Budd, Glyndebourne Festival Opera

alexandra Coghlan Sunday, 11 August 2013

It’s not a crowd-pleaser like Albert Herring, nor wittily fanciful like A Midsummer Night’s Dream or macabre like The Turn of the Screw and certainly not the classic that Peter Grimes has become, and until three years ago Glyndebourne had never even staged Britten’s Billy Budd. But Michael Grandage’s 2010 production was a sea-changer.

Prom 29: Tannhäuser, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Runnicles

David Nice Monday, 05 August 2013

On the one occasion I went to Bayreuth, I made the mistake of seeing The Flying Dutchman and Lohengrin after the best of Ring cycles. At the Proms we’ve had a week of serious Wagnerian withdrawal symptoms, so Tannhäuser was never going to feel like too much or too little of a good thing.

Prom 20: Götterdämmerung, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim

Edward Seckerson Monday, 29 July 2013

And so Wotan’s ravens flew home and at the twilight’s last gleaming the immortals were consumed by fire and water. All was finally and irrevocably redeemed by the power of love, and the most beautiful of all the leitmotifs in Wagner’s Ring rolled out across the Albert Hall like a benediction. It was a defining moment in Proms history, no doubt, and was greeted with a few moments of perfect - and I mean perfect - silence.

Prom 19: Tristan und Isolde, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Bychkov

Sebastian Scotney Sunday, 28 July 2013

Such has been the justifiable flow of superlatives this week about the Berlin Staatskapelle's Ring conducted by Barenboim, the centrepiece of the BBC Proms' Wagner bicentenary celebration, it would have been easy to forget that the 2013 Proms season contains not just those four, but seven complete Wagner operas.

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Prom 18: Siegfried, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim

Ismene Brown Saturday, 27 July 2013

The transformative power of the Royal Albert Hall at Proms-time never ceases to amaze me.

Road Rage, Garsington Opera

Roderic Dunnett Thursday, 25 July 2013

Garsington Opera, now based at John Paul Getty’s countrified home, the Wormsley Estate near Henley, has nipped a leaf out of Glyndebourne’s book and embarked on its first full-blooded Community Opera: a far cry from Vivaldi and Rossini, but not from Janáček (Garsington will stage The Cunning Little Vixen next season).

Prom 15: Die Walküre, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim

David Nice Wednesday, 24 July 2013

Things may be falling apart, a storm now rages but new broods of humans and demigoddesses have been fathered by chief god Wotan, who has undergone a Doctor Who like transformation from Iain Paterson into Bryn Terfel.

Prom 14: Das Rheingold, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim

David Nice Tuesday, 23 July 2013

Swimming around in the Rhine is what most of us wanted to be doing on the hottest day of the year. A cooling, riverbed low E flat from Daniel Barenboim’s Berlin double basses, and then the staggered horn entries announced we were going to be in the finest sonic hands for two and a half hours – or nearly 15, if the colossal Proms Ring is to be accounted in its full, four-night glory.