Opera
Aida, Opera North review - militarism soundly subvertedThursday, 02 May 2019
Opera North created something approaching a new art form when they performed Wagner’s Ring in "concert stagings", putting their large orchestra in full view, with singers symbolically dressed and given limited front-of-stage space, and a continuous... Read more... |
'The orchestra becomes the landscape': Annabel Arden on Opera North's concert staging of AidaTuesday, 30 April 2019
This will be the latest in Opera North’s acclaimed concert stagings of large-scale works, which have previously included Wagner’s Ring cycle, Puccini’s Turandot and Strauss’s Salome. For Verdi’s Egyptian epic, we’ve recreated the team which brought... Read more... |
Billy Budd, Royal Opera review - Britten's drama of good and evil too much at seaWednesday, 24 April 2019
On one level, it's about Biblically informed good and evil at sea, in both the literal and the metaphorical sense. On another, the love that dared not speak its name when Britten and E M Forster adapted Hermann Melville's novella is either repressed... Read more... |
SS Mendi: Dancing the Death Drill, Isango Ensemble, Linbury Theatre - evocative and essential lyric theatreSaturday, 20 April 2019
While Bach's and Handel's Passions have been driving thousands to contemplate suffering, mortality and grace, this elegy for black lives lost over a century ago also chimes movingly with pre-Easter offerings. First seen in Southampton last year as a... Read more... |
Faust, Royal Opera review - fusty Gounod still dancesFriday, 12 April 2019
Goethe's cosmic Faust becomes Gounod's operatic fust in what, somewhat surprisingly, remains a repertoire staple. You go for the tunes, hoping for the world-class voices to do them justice and prepared for a pallid quarter-of-an-hour or two. David... Read more... |
Franco Fagioli, Il Pomo d’Oro, Birmingham Town Hall review - flair and flamboyanceMonday, 08 April 2019
For the final, and only UK, date of his Vinci Arias tour, virtuoso countertenor Franco Fagioli gave an animated and arresting recital of baroque arias at Birmingham Town Hall on Sunday afternoon with the Italian period instrument group Il pomo d’oro... Read more... |
The Pilgrim’s Progress, RNCM, Manchester review – a theatrical triumphThursday, 04 April 2019
The Royal Northern College of Music’s spring opera is a theatrical triumph and musically very, very good. It’s 27 years since they last presented what Vaughan Williams called his "morality" – that was a triumph too, and they made a CD of it which I... Read more... |
Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel, English National Opera review - powerful ensemble, wrong subjectSunday, 31 March 2019
If you can’t put a name to any of Jack the Ripper’s victims – and spin it however you please, victims they remain – then you shouldn’t buy the publicity about this new opera "bringing dignity back" to the murdered women in question. Isn’t it time to... Read more... |
Berenice, Royal Opera/London Handel Festival review - luminous shenanigans in the LinburyThursday, 28 March 2019
It might be the nature of Handel's operatic beasts, but performances tend to fall into two camps: brilliant in the fusion of drama and virtuosity, singing and playing, or boring to various degrees. If this handsome opening gambit in the 2019 London... Read more... |
In the spirit of the composer as innovator: Samir Savant on the London Handel FestivalWednesday, 27 March 2019
This is my third year as festival director of the London Handel Festival, an annual celebration of the life and work of composer George Frideric Handel, which takes place every spring in venues across the capital. Our core charitable and artistic... Read more... |
Elizabeth I/Macbeth, English Touring Opera review - elegance and eerinessTuesday, 26 March 2019
A crash, a scurry, a long, lilting serenade – the overture to Rossini’s Elizabeth I sounds oddly familiar. Not to worry. English Touring Opera has anticipated our confusion. “You may recognise this overture” flash the surtitles, to a ripple of... Read more... |
La forza del destino, Royal Opera review - generous voices, dramatic voidsFriday, 22 March 2019
When "Maestro" Riccardo Muti left the Royal Opera's previous production of Verdi's fate-laden epic, disgusted by minor changes to fit the scenery on the Covent Garden stage, no-one was sorry when Antonio Pappano, the true master of the house then... Read more... |
