Opera
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... |
The Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera review - sassy, probing and splendidly castFriday, 30 March 2018
One year to Brexit, a seemingly endless winter chill and Londoners need soul food, badly. I prescribe an evening of total immersion in The Marriage of Figaro. ENO’s second revival of Fiona Shaw’s sassy, probing production (with revival director... Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Lucerne Easter Festival: Haitink, Schiff and an alternative PassionFriday, 30 March 2018
Anyone passionate about great conducting would jump at the chance to hear 89-year-old Bernard Haitink giving three days of masterclasses with eight young practitioners of the art, his eighth and possibly last series in Lucerne (though he's not... Read more... |
Ariadne auf Naxos, Scottish Opera review - superb singing in slick new productionTuesday, 27 March 2018
"The Show must go on". So say the posters dotted around Glasgow and Edinburgh for Scottish Opera's production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. Except on Thursday, it didn’t. A fire at a nearby Glasgow nightclub which ravaged several city... Read more... |
Glyndebourne Opera Cup - a view from insideTuesday, 27 March 2018
I was on a panel of six critics convened to choose the winner of a special "media award" at the Glyndebourne Opera Cup on Saturday evening. What follows is therefore not a review, but rather a chance to chew over the concept and its highs (and... Read more... |
Hansel and Gretel, RNCM, Manchester review – an urban dreamMonday, 19 March 2018
Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel is a ‘"fairytale opera" (its composer’s description), and yet one characteristic frequently commented on is its "Wagnerian" scoring. For this production, with David Pountney’s English translation, the RNCM... Read more... |
La traviata, English National Opera review - into a vortex of ineptitudeSaturday, 17 March 2018
You don't have to be a good director to manage the artistic side of an opera house. Daniel Kramer arrived at ENO and boosted morale at a time when company relations with then-CEO Cressida Pollock had hit rock bottom, and his repertoire choices for... Read more... |
Wake, Birmingham Opera Company review - power to the peopleThursday, 15 March 2018
“Would you like a veil?” asked a steward, offering a length of black gauze, and when you’re at a production by Birmingham Opera Company it’s usually wisest to say yes. You get used to it - the frantic Google-mapping to locate the venue; the hike... Read more... |
Rinaldo, The English Concert, Barbican review - Bicket's band steals the spotlightWednesday, 14 March 2018
It was the work with which Handel conquered London, the Italian opera that finally wooed a suspicious English audience to the charms of Dr Johnson’s “exotic and irrational entertainment”. Three hundred years later, neither Rinaldo nor London’s... Read more... |
