Opera
Madama Butterfly, Glyndebourne review - perverse staging, outstanding castSunday, 20 May 2018
Puccini’s heroines and the rough treatment he hands out to them have come in for plenty of opprobrium over the years. But just occasionally they fight back on his behalf in the person of an outstanding singing actress; and this is exactly the case... Read more... |
The Rosenkavalier film, OAE, Paterson, QEH review - silent-era muddle expertly accompaniedFriday, 18 May 2018
Let's face it, Robert "Cabinet of Dr Caligari" Wiene's 1926 film loosely based on Strauss and Hofmannsthal's 1911 "comedy for music" is a mostly inartistic ramble. Historically, though, it proves fascinating. The composer mostly left it to Otto... Read more... |
Lessons in Love and Violence, Royal Opera review - savage elegance never quite glows red-hotFriday, 11 May 2018
A rope is mercy; a razor-blade to the throat, a kiss; a red-hot poker… But, of course, we never get anything so literal as the poker in George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s elegant, insinuating retelling of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II. The title... Read more... |
Win a Luxury Weekend for Two to celebrate Brighton Festival!Tuesday, 08 May 2018
Brighton Festival is the UK’s leading annual celebration of the arts, with events taking place in venues both familiar and unusual across Brighton & Hove for three weeks every May. This year, the Festival boasts an eclectic line-up spanning... Read more... |
Eugene Onegin, Scottish Opera review - sweepingly sumptuous TchaikovskySaturday, 28 April 2018
It’s 25 years since Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin last came to the Scottish Opera stage, and this brand new production, directed by Oliver Mears, DIrector of Opera at The Royal Opera, gives the stirring score a stately yet elusive grandeur. Based on... Read more... |
4.48 Psychosis, Royal Opera, Lyric Hammersmith review - despairing truth in song and speechThursday, 26 April 2018
Depression, with or without psychotic episodes, is a rare subject for drama or music theatre - and with good reason: the sheer unrelenting monotony of anguish and self-absorption is hard to reproduce within a concentrated time-span. So we still... Read more... |
The Marriage of Figaro, English Touring Opera review - vanilla Mozart still tastes sweetThursday, 26 April 2018
The Fates did not want theartsdesk to review English Touring Opera’s new production of The Marriage of Figaro. The Beast from the East intervened to prevent a colleague from covering it at the Hackney Empire at the start of its tour in February: now... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Bergman's The Magic FluteFriday, 20 April 2018
Opera on film's most magical offering, better by some way than Joseph Losey's cinematically tricksy Don Giovanni, at last makes it to Region 2 in this BFI dual-format release. I've watched Ingmar Bergman's sublime response to Mozart many times, and... Read more... |
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Royal Opera review - bleak rigour and black comedy still cast a spellFriday, 13 April 2018
Anyone who's seen Richard Jones's rigorous production before will remember the makeover – Katerina Izmailova, bored and brutalised housewife released by sex and murder from her shackles, having her drab bedroom expanded and redecorated in deliberate... Read more... |
Bernstein's MASS, RFH review - polymorphousness in excelsisSaturday, 07 April 2018
Live exposure to centenary composer Leonard Bernstein's anything-goes monsterpiece of 1971, as with Britten's War Requiem of the previous decade, probably shouldn't happen more than once every ten years, if only because each performance has to be... Read more... |
Coraline, Royal Opera, Barbican review - spooky story, underwhelming scoreThursday, 05 April 2018
With the eyes of musical fashion turned relentlessly on the calculating stage works of chilly alchemist George Benjamin, hopes ran high for a brighter spark in a new opera by his contemporary Mark-Anthony Turnage. Would Coraline, a music-drama for... Read more... |
Soprano Ruby Hughes on Handel's last prima donnaSaturday, 31 March 2018
Who was Giulia Frasi? This is so often the response I get when I mention the name of this Italian singer who came to London and became Handel’s last prima donna during the final decade of his life and, consequently, the supreme soprano of English... Read more... |
