Opera
Giulio Cesare, English Touring Opera review - a return visit to Handel's EgyptMonday, 27 February 2023
English Touring Opera opened its spring season with Handel's Giulio Cesare – not a new production, but in a new guise. Typically for Baroque opera, the version of the work premiered in 1724 was very long. ETO previously took up the challenge by... Read more... |
Rusalka, Royal Opera review - ravishing sounds, torpid stagingWednesday, 22 February 2023
Psychological depths in the myth of the water nymph who yearns for the human world, with disastrous results, have led to some unusual settings for Dvořák’s operatic masterpiece on the theme: a nursery, a hotel room (both successful), a brothel (not... Read more... |
The Rhinegold, English National Opera review - tacky, edgy, brilliantMonday, 20 February 2023
All that glitters, titular treasure included, is dangerous childsplay in Richard Jones’s third UK staging of what Wagner called the “preliminary evening” to the three main operas of The Ring of the Nibelung. It’s nothing like the previous two, for... Read more... |
Ariadne auf Naxos, Opera North review - funny and beautifully sungMonday, 20 February 2023
Rodula Gaitanou’s production of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos is a hugely entertaining treatment of an opera that brings its fair share of problems to any company, and the chief virtue of Opera North’s presentation (a co-production with... Read more... |
The Cunning Little Vixen, Opera North review - magic of a classic stagingMonday, 06 February 2023
It’s good to think that there are some opera productions – not just compositions – that in themselves can have the status of classics. David Pountney’s 1980 interpretation of Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen must be high on a list of contenders... Read more... |
Tannhäuser, Royal Opera review - true goodness triumphs in the endThursday, 02 February 2023
It’s always a disappointment when the Venusberg orgy Wagner added in 1861 to his original, 1845 Tannhäuser to suit Parisian tastes gives way to foursquare operatic conventions. Especially so in this revival of Tim Albery’s 2010 production, where... Read more... |
First Person: soprano Soraya Mafi on why Glyndebourne's tour cancellation is disastrousFriday, 20 January 2023
Anyone concerned about making the arts accessible regardless of where they live should be concerned by the recent announcement from Glyndebourne that it’s having to cease touring across England.That painful decision, and Welsh National Opera’s... Read more... |
Least Like the Other, Irish National Opera, Linbury Theatre review - the harrowing of Rosemary KennedyMonday, 16 January 2023
This multimedia horror revue gave me heart trouble, which is an odd kind of compliment. Not at first: the assault of abrasive music, the one singer having to leap all over the place vocally, competing with spoken word and information overload, can... Read more... |
A Child in Striped Pyjamas, The Cockpit review - a brave tackling of a Holocaust storyFriday, 13 January 2023
The obstacles that have faced Noah Max in the five years since he resolved to make an opera of John Boyne’s Holocaust novel The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas would have stymied someone less determined. Not just the usual fundraising and logistical... Read more... |
Katya Kabanova, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - living every bar of Janáček’s tragedyThursday, 12 January 2023
Amanda Majeski pushed the boundaries as Janáček's tormented heroine for director Richard Jones at the Royal Opera. Here there were confines – no “concert staging” this, but a laissez-faire affair with scores and music stands, occasionally obscuring... Read more... |
Best of 2022: OperaMonday, 26 December 2022
Looking through everything we’ve covered this year – and some of our reviewers have made their choices from an even wider sphere – I find, as in 2021, that the abundance of classical-concert top choices is richer than the number of truly outstanding... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Brno - a visionary at home in his ‘Moravian Bayreuth’Saturday, 24 December 2022
“Visionary,” I’m told, is a clichéd word these days. But so long as you don’t fling it about too freely, it’s apt: for me, there are only two visionary directors working in opera right now. One is our own Richard Jones – though even he can get it... Read more... |
