Opera
Carmen, English National OperaThursday, 21 May 2015
Crotch-grabbing, suggestions of oral and anal sex, stylized punching and kicking and other casual violence offer diminishing returns in your standard Calixto Bieito production. Sometimes a scene or two flashes focused brilliance, which only makes... Read more... |
Parsifal, CBSO, Nelsons, Symphony Hall, BirminghamTuesday, 19 May 2015
This was a very "concert" performance indeed. Across the stage music stands stood like sentinels lest any rash singer attempted to stand out and – surely not – act. Such fears were misplaced (or the stands did their job) in the end, as the music was... Read more... |
Il Trovatore, Scottish OperaMonday, 18 May 2015
"The darkness deceived me," sings Leonora in Act I as she mistakenly rushes into the arms of the Count di Luna, rather than those of her beloved, the mysterious troubador Manrico who’s been serenading her for nights on end. Seeing Robert B Dickson’s... Read more... |
Peter Pan, Welsh National OperaSunday, 17 May 2015
I must have been one of the few in Saturday’s audience for Richard Ayres’s new opera who had never seen Barrie’s play or read the book, so I’m unable to judge how faithfully it renders the original – in case that matters. Somehow one knows the... Read more... |
Being Both, Coote, English Concert, Bicket, Brighton DomeSaturday, 16 May 2015
Over the past decade Alice Coote has emerged as a singer of rare and exquisite vocal quality. Even when the direction of a project is questioned, there has generally been consensus that she generally sounds gorgeous. The concept of Being Both, a... Read more... |
The Pirates of Penzance, English National OperaSunday, 10 May 2015
When ENO announced its return to Gilbert and Sullivan, rapture at the news that Mike Leigh, genius Topsy-Turvy director, would be the master of wonderland ceremonies was modified by its choice, The Pirates of Penzance. Last staged at the Coliseum –... Read more... |
Dalibor, BBCSO, Bělohlávek, BarbicanSunday, 03 May 2015
Jiří Bělohlávek and the BBC Symphony Orchestra are on to a good thing with Czech opera. Prague is a major centre for world-class opera, but much of the repertoire performed there is all but unknown abroad. Bělohlávek, who holds positions in both... Read more... |
The Virtues of Things, Linbury Studio TheatreSunday, 03 May 2015
How many words would you expect in an average libretto? 10,000? 15,000? Whatever that number is you can triple it and then some for The Virtues of Things – a new opera from Sally O’Reilly and Matt Rogers of astonishing, exhausting, battering... Read more... |
Król Roger, Royal OperaSaturday, 02 May 2015
Let’s get one thing straight at the outset: Szymanowski’s 1926 opera Król Roger isn’t a lovely occasional oddity, a rarity whose appeal is largely novelty, or a dust-it-off-once-a-decade sort of piece. It’s that rarest of things, a real and original... Read more... |
Trial by Jury / The Zoo, King's Head TheatreTuesday, 28 April 2015
Judge Judy meets The Only Way Is Essex: this endlessly resourceful production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s first (mini) masterpiece Trial by Jury is one that cries out to appear on TV. Which in a make-believe sense it does: we’re the audience in the... Read more... |
Die Walküre Act 3, WNO, Koenigs, Wales Millennium Centre, CardiffMonday, 27 April 2015
There’s a lot to be said for concert performances of Wagner. Not only are you spared the post-prandial lucubrations of aspirant directors – the moonmen and the fighter pilots, the jackboots and the biogas installations. But it’s possible to... Read more... |
ATTHIS, Linbury Studio TheatreFriday, 24 April 2015
I do wish that arts institutions would stop using the word “immersive” when they simply mean “staged”. Just to be clear, there is nothing “immersive” about Netia Jones’s new staging of Georg Friedrich Haas's song-cycle ATTHIS at the Royal Opera... Read more... |
