Opera
Orpheus and Eurydice, English National Opera review – imaginative but underwhelmingWednesday, 02 October 2019
English National Opera chose a curiously low-key production to open their season. Gluck’s Orpheus and Eurydice has only three singing roles and very little action. For this production, Wayne McGregor has reimagined the work as an opera/dance hybrid... Read more... |
Jessye Norman, 1945-2019Tuesday, 01 October 2019
She was recording Carmen in Paris, and the Radio France auditorium was packed with the press, asking such dazzling questions as "have you been up the Eiffel Tower yet?" and "what do you think of the French men?". I thought, given the statuesque... Read more... |
Rigoletto, Welsh National Opera review - same old update, fine performanceSaturday, 28 September 2019
Considering the doubtfulness of its underlying idea, James Macdonald’s production of Rigoletto has shown remarkable staying power since its Cardiff début 17 years ago. It’s true that this particular opera - which, unlike one or two others of Verdi’s... Read more... |
The Intelligence Park, Linbury Theatre review - baroque to the point of obscurityThursday, 26 September 2019
Could Gerald Barry's first opera really be as enervating in the Royal Opera House's Linbury Theatre as it seemed nearly 30 years ago at its Almeida Music Festival premiere? Since then we've become accustomed to wonder at, even love, the Barry style... Read more... |
Agrippina, Royal Opera review - carry on up the CampidoglioTuesday, 24 September 2019
It was said of the Venetian audiences randy for the satirical antique of Handel's first great operatic cornucopia in 1709 that "a stranger who should have seen the manner in which they were affected, would have imagined they were all distracted".... Read more... |
Carmen, Welsh National Opera review - intermittent brilliance in a gloomy, unclear environmentSunday, 22 September 2019
You can love Carmen as much as you like (as much as I do, for instance), and still have a certain sympathy for the poor director who has to find something new to say about a work so anchored in a particular style and place. For all its musical and... Read more... |
Werther, Royal Opera review - shadows and sunsets from an unreconstructed romanticWednesday, 18 September 2019
Goethe’s Die Leiden des junges Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther) was a vital spark in the ignition of the German romantic movement. The story of a young man driven to kill himself for love of a woman, Charlotte, who loves him but marries... Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Royal Opera review - laid-back LotharioTuesday, 17 September 2019
Kasper Holten left a mixed bag of productions behind at Royal Opera when he left in 2017, but the best of them - though not all my colleagues on The Arts Desk have agreed - is this Don Giovanni, now back for its latest revival.Visually, the... Read more... |
The Greek Passion, Opera North - pertinence and powerSunday, 15 September 2019
Martinů's The Greek Passion is a bold choice as a season opener, all the more so given that Opera North are staging the rarely-seen original version of his 1957 opera. Commissioned for Covent Garden then shabbily ditched, this is faster moving and... Read more... |
'This goes beyond music and drama': tenor Nicky Spence on Martinů's 'The Greek Passion'Friday, 13 September 2019
I’m a big fanboy of Czech music, Janáček and Martinů especially, but I’d never seen The Greek Passion before being cast as Manolios in Opera North’s new production, as it remains quite a rarity in the opera house. For those who don’t know the... Read more... |
Don Jo, Grimeborn review - conceptual style over musical substanceSaturday, 07 September 2019
Described as a "performer-led re-devising’"of Mozart’s 1787 opera Don Giovanni - a tale of an arrogant and ruthless lothario who seduced countess women - Don Jo certainly played around with many of the norms we encounter in both sexual relationships... Read more... |
Prom 59: Benvenuto Cellini, Monteverdi Choir, ORR, Gardiner review - don't stop the carnivalTuesday, 03 September 2019
So we never got the ultimate Proms spectacular, the four brass bands at the points of the Albert Hall compass for Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts, in the composer's 150th anniversary year. Yet Sir John Eliot Gardiner has learnt how to work the... Read more... |
