Opera
Siegfried, RINGafa, St Mary’s Putney review - heroes everywhereTuesday, 16 November 2021
A Samoan-themed Ring cycle? Well, why not? A calculated distance has always separated its audience from the Norse and German epics of its origin.Wagner composed it once capital and technology had begun their ineluctable overthrow of gods and kings,... Read more... |
Carmen, Opera North review - humanity and no bullThursday, 11 November 2021
Is Bizet’s Carmen all about Carmen? Or Don José and his obsession with her? Or the society that made her what she is? Or all of the above? Inevitably it’s an opera that almost never escapes some Regietheater treatment these days. Director Edward... Read more... |
Bluebeard's Castle 1: Bullock, Finley, Theatre of Sound, Stone Nest review - scenes from a marriageMonday, 08 November 2021
Which is the locked-in character of the two in Bluebeard’s Castle? In composing his one-act masterpiece of shattering profundity, composer Bartók clearly intended Bluebeard’s as “the tragedy of a soul destined to be alone”; the woman Judith unlocks... Read more... |
Bluebeard’s Castle 2: Komlósi, Relyea, LPO, Gardner, RFH review - consolations of solitudeMonday, 08 November 2021
Where is the stage – outside or within? The question posed by the prologue of Bartók’s only opera addresses the fundamental privacy of our thoughts, as well as setting the scene for its drama within the theatre of our own minds. For many of us a... Read more... |
First Persons: Susan Bullock, Gerald Finley and Stephen Higgins on a 'Bluebeard's Castle' with a differenceThursday, 04 November 2021
Tonight a version of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle launches in the intimate surroundings of Stone Nest, a former Welsh chapel in London's West End. Its conductor along with soprano Susan Bullock and baritone Gerald FInley, alternating in the roles of... Read more... |
'Everyone who played for him always gave their very best': remembering Bernard Haitink (1929-2021)Tuesday, 02 November 2021
Few musicians get to stage-manage a dignified departure from the world. Among his last compositions, Richard Strauss set a poem by Eichendorff depicting an old couple looking into the sunset and asking “is this perhaps death?”, and towards the end... Read more... |
HMS Pinafore, English National Opera review - shipshape classic comedy craftSaturday, 30 October 2021
Yes, it was bound to be HMS Laugh-a-minute, given Cal “One Man, Two Guvnors” McCrystal’s ENO comedy riffs on an already funny early G&S classic, but what does this tight little craft have to say to Little England today?That a British sailor’s “... Read more... |
Royal Opera House lullabies for Little AmalTuesday, 26 October 2021
“I want to tell her that people will be good,” Tewodros Aregawe of Phosphoros Theatre confided to us as Little Amal closed her eyes on the giant bed made up for her in the Paul Hamlyn Hall, “that all the people with kind eyes who have walked... Read more... |
The Rake's Progress, Glyndebourne Tour - a classic revitalizedMonday, 25 October 2021
Tom Rakewell Esquire, the Glyndebourne edition generally known as “the Hockney Rake” though it is very much director John Cox’s too, is 46 years old. The great Bernard Haitink, who conducted the first airing in 1975 at a time when Stravinsky's... Read more... |
Die ägyptische Helena, Fulham Opera review - mythological mess impressively handledWednesday, 20 October 2021
So Helen of Troy arrives at a church in Fulham via Poseidon’s island palace and a pavilion at the foot of the Atlas Mountains. She’s trickier than ever in the golden but tangled web Richard Strauss and his myth-and-symbol-mad poet Hugo von... Read more... |
Bernstein Double Bill, Opera North review - fractured relationships in song and danceMonday, 18 October 2021
Leonard Bernstein’s one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti enjoyed a relatively trouble-free gestation, at least compared to his other stage works. Its seven short scenes last around 50 minutes, Bernstein providing his own libretto and completing much of... Read more... |
Don Pasquale, Glyndebourne Tour review - winning comeback for a sturdy veteranTuesday, 12 October 2021
If it ain’t broke… on tour and in the Glyndebourne summer festival, Mariame Clément's production of Don Pasquale has gratified audiences for a decade now. It surely will again in Paul Higgins's spirited revival. The show returns to the Sussex house... Read more... |
