Opera
Die Zauberflöte, Glyndebourne Festival review – high jinks in the Grand Mozart HotelFriday, 19 July 2019
Die Zauberflöte rarely attracts the plain cooks of the operatic world. Mozart’s farewell opera chucks so many highly-spiced ingredients into its outlandish pot – pantomime and parable, burlesque and ritual – that many productions opt for one show-... Read more... |
Pavarotti review - enjoyable but superficial survey of a superstarFriday, 19 July 2019
One of the most memorable moments in Ron Howard’s documentary about Luciano Pavarotti is one of its earliest scenes. It’s a chunk of amateur video shot when Pavarotti visited the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, a splendid Belle Epoque structure in the... Read more... |
Pick of the BBC Proms 2019Thursday, 18 July 2019
It's been much the same trajectory over the past few years for many of us: look through the Proms prospectus, feel a bit disappointed that there isn't more of the rich and rare, be won round when it comes to the performances. After all, you're... Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Longborough Festival Opera review - Mozart in the urinalMonday, 15 July 2019
One of the features of the converted barn that forms the theatre at Longborough is a trio of statues that tops the front pediment of the building: Wagner, flanked by Verdi on the right and Mozart on the left. No one could question Wagner:... Read more... |
Eugene Onegin/Georgiana, Buxton Festival review - poetry and pantomimeThursday, 11 July 2019
It’s the saddest music in the world: the quiet heartbeat and falling melody with which Tchaikovsky opens his opera Eugene Onegin. Imagine a whole society, a whole lifetime of solitude, longing and disillusion, evoked in a single bass note and a few... Read more... |
La Fille du Régiment, Royal Opera review - enjoyable but questionable revivalTuesday, 09 July 2019
On paper, this might seem like a revival too far, a production clearly intended as a vehicle for world-class singers being tacked on the end of the Covent Garden season, and without any big names in sight. But it turns out that Laurent Pelly’s... Read more... |
'A product not only of his era but also of his travels': Ian Page on Mozart's cosmopolitan educationMonday, 08 July 2019
When Mozart was an established composer living in Vienna during the final years of his short life, a young student seemingly came to him to seek his advice. The would-be young composer said that he was planning to write a symphony, and asked Mozart... Read more... |
The Turn of the Screw, Garsington Opera review - superb music drama on an open stageFriday, 05 July 2019
The famous ambiguity of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw is whether the ghosts that take possession of the two children are real or merely figments of the young Governess’s imagination. Britten’s opera resolves this unequivocally in favour of... Read more... |
Noye's Fludde, ENO/Theatre Royal Stratford East review - two-dimensional music theatreThursday, 04 July 2019
Benjamin Britten's musical mystery tour is still bringing young communities together to work with professionals at the highest level 61 years on from its premiere in a Suffolk church, and Lyndsey Turner's sweet production at Stratford must have been... Read more... |
Rusalka, Glyndebourne Festival review - away with the distressed fairiesMonday, 01 July 2019
When you think of the extravagant, violent, super grown-up subject-matter that stalked the operatic stage round about 1900 - the Toscas and the Salomes, the Cavs, the Pags and the rest of the verismo pack - you might find it strange to contemplate... Read more... |
Trouble in Tahiti/A Dinner Engagement, Royal College of Music review - slick, witty and warmSaturday, 29 June 2019
It’s a clever decision to pair Lennox Berkeley’s A Dinner Engagement with Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti. The first is all about happily-ever-after, while the second is all about what happens next. The optimistic grime and smog of 1950s... Read more... |
The Cunning Little Vixen, Rattle, LSO, Barbican review – dark magic in the woodsFriday, 28 June 2019
As midsummer night’s dreams go, it would be hard to surpass the darkly enchanting collaboration between Sir Simon Rattle and Peter Sellars that will bring The Cunning Little Vixen to the Barbican again this evening and on Saturday. Janáček’s... Read more... |
