Opera
Prom 2: Boris Godunov, Royal Opera, PappanoSunday, 17 July 2016
The Royal Opera’s Boris Godunov production made the short trip from Covent Garden to South Ken for the company’s appearance at the 2016 Proms. The opera (here in its original 1869 version) is a good choice for concert presentation: as Antonio... Read more... |
Falstaff, CBSO, Gardner, Symphony Hall BirminghamThursday, 14 July 2016
Edward Gardner gives the downbeat, and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra bursts into Verdi’s great opening guffaw. Enter stage left Graham Clark, as Dr Caius. Enter stage right Ambrogio Maestri, as Falstaff. And before a note has been sung,... Read more... |
Pick of the BBC Proms 2016Monday, 11 July 2016
"Refreshingly traditional" is how one of our writers describes this year's BBC Proms programme. Alarmingly unadventurous might be another way of putting it, though only in comparison with many of the golden years under Roger Wright.It's true that... Read more... |
Leonore, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Buxton FestivalSunday, 10 July 2016
The first two of the three in-house opera productions in this year’s Buxton Festival could be bracketed under a slogan of "love stories, Jim – but not quite as we know them". Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi is, of course, Romeo and Juliet … sort... Read more... |
The Magic Flute, Iford Manor GardenSaturday, 09 July 2016
To reach Sarastro's temple of wisdom, you have to climb a series of exquisitely manicured terraces to a tiny cloister in one of the world's great gardens. Iford Arts have been inviting high-quality small opera companies to perform and produce their... Read more... |
Il Trovatore, Royal OperaWednesday, 06 July 2016
That often-repeated truism about Verdi's craziest melodrama, that it needs four of the world's greatest voices, makes no mention of acting ability. Given the top-notch international approach to this kind of opera, impressively fielded by what's... Read more... |
Götterdämmerung, Opera North, Southbank CentreMonday, 04 July 2016
And so it ends: Hagen drowns, Valhalla burns, and the ring returns to the Rhine, while somewhere beneath – Wagner’s dawn trumpets sounding faintly in the distance – the dwarf Alberich continues his lonely scheming. It would be hard to find a more... Read more... |
Siegfried, Opera North, Southbank CentreSaturday, 02 July 2016
For some of us, Siegfried is a perfect opera. Like L.627 it stubbornly observes the Aristotelian rules of space and time to cut a generous slice of life. There are almost no set-pieces to break the flow of one-on-one conversations, accusations,... Read more... |
Die Walküre, Opera North, Southbank CentreThursday, 30 June 2016
Enter the human - and superhuman demands for at least four of the singers - in the second, towering instalment of Wagner's Ring cycle. It says so much for Opera North's achievement so far that no one fell in any way short of the sometimes insane... Read more... |
Das Rheingold, Opera North, Southbank CentreWednesday, 29 June 2016
They promised Wagner for everybody at the Southbank Centre, and so far they're delivering. Community events cluster around a livescreening of each Ring instalment in the Clore Ballroom. We privileged few in the Festival Hall wondered how newcomers... Read more... |
The Hogboon, LSO, Rattle, BarbicanMonday, 27 June 2016
The spirit of the late Peter Maxwell Davies blazed in the Barbican Hall last night. Dear God, we’ve never needed his humane, inclusive vision more than now. It’s a measure of the man that his final work, The Hogboon, should fill a stage with... Read more... |
Le Nozze di Figaro, Longborough Festival OperaMonday, 27 June 2016
“It doesn’t need me,” Sebastian Thomas writes in this season’s Longborough programme, “to labour the idea that the content of a theatrical or musical piece should find some relevance to our own lives.” No, indeed. Practically every director one... Read more... |
