Opera
First Person: director Frederic Wake-Walker on Glyndebourne's new 'Fidelio'Wednesday, 06 October 2021
2016Dear Diary, I’ve just had a meeting with Glyndebourne about directing a new production of Fidelio. I realise it’s one of the hardest operas in the repertoire to direct but I’m so swept up in Beethoven’s vision, the power of the music and the... Read more... |
Jenůfa, Royal Opera review - Janáček scours the soul again in a compelling new takeWednesday, 29 September 2021
At the heart of Janáček’s searing music-drama, and the pioneering play by another remarkable Czech, Gabriela Preissová, on which it is based, are two strong women trapped in a conventional community whose intelligence goes to waste and whose lives... Read more... |
Madam Butterfly, Welsh National Opera review - decent performance, disagreeable contextWednesday, 29 September 2021
It’s easy enough to see the difficulty Madam Butterfly places your thinking director in. I share her pain. What the whirring brain will quickly see as a penetrating, or at least surface scratching, study of a whole repertoire of modern obsessions –... Read more... |
The Midsummer Marriage, LPO, Gardner, RFH review – Tippett’s cornucopia shines in fits and startsSunday, 26 September 2021
British opera’s attempted answer to The Magic Flute, and its presentation as the opening gambit of Edward Gardner’s eminent position as principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, leave me queasily ambivalent.After all the smoke and... Read more... |
'Rest now, you God': remembering bass-baritone Norman Bailey (1933-2021)Friday, 24 September 2021
Few singers really change your life. Norman Bailey did that for me [writes David Nice of theartsdesk]. The occasion wasn't my first experience of a Wagner opera, but it was the first time I'd been to a performance of his great human comedy Die... Read more... |
The Magic Flute, Royal Opera review - all but a guarantee of a great night outSaturday, 18 September 2021
Rarely has the revolving door of opera twirled so efficiently. David McVicar’s venerable production of Rigoletto may have exited the Royal Opera on Monday (presumably with one final squeak of protest from that pesky revolve), replaced by a shiny new... Read more... |
Rigoletto, Royal Opera review - routine clouds the best in this season openerTuesday, 14 September 2021
Another season, another new production of Verdi’s nastiest masterpiece. For which we should be profoundly grateful after the tribulations of the last 18 months. Yet how quickly elements of the routine can corrode the soul of the spectator, just as... Read more... |
Summer seasons in a Covid world: five opera company movers and shakers reflectTuesday, 14 September 2021
The bleakest time of all for live music during the Covid crisis came in the first four and a half months of this year. Re-emergence came too late for many of the big national opera companies – though the Royal Opera threw down a sensational gauntlet... Read more... |
The Barber of Seville, Welsh National Opera review - back to work in an old bangerFriday, 10 September 2021
Welcome back, WNO! Yes, emphatically, and with a loud hurrah, which is precisely what the company received, and rightly received, from the somewhat arbitrarily scattered first night Millennium Centre audience for their opening revival of The Barber... Read more... |
Tristan und Isolde, Glyndebourne, BBC Proms review - endless love, perfect paceWednesday, 01 September 2021
“Now I’ve conducted Tristan for the first time,” the 27-year-old Richard Strauss wrote from Weimar to Wagner’s widow Cosima in 1892, “and it was the most wonderful day of my life”. Robin Ticciati, over a decade older but still young in terms of his... Read more... |
Ariadne auf Naxos, Edinburgh International Festival review – apt setting for Strauss hybridMonday, 30 August 2021
This lively interpretation of Richard Strauss’s opera within an opera provides a feast for the senses as a musical highlight of the Edinburgh international Festival. As with the rest of the festival’s 2021 programme, the opera is performed outdoors... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Birgit Nilsson Days - the rich legacy of a farm girl turned divaThursday, 26 August 2021
Feet firmly planted on fertile native soil, but always open to the world, lyric-dramatic soprano Birgit Nilsson soared into realms no-one from the rolling hills and coastline of Sweden’s Bjäre peninsula, where she grew up, could possibly have... Read more... |
