Opera
Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne Festival OperaMonday, 09 June 2014
Sex farce, class comedy, crime thriller, existential tragedy, supernatural shocker - Don Giovanni is, as Jonathan Kent notes about his production in the Glyndebourne programme, a cabinet of curiosities. Mozart's music hurdles to and fro across two... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Budapest: Magyar StraussSunday, 08 June 2014
If the Hungarian State Opera wanted to demonstrate that it is now back on top form, it could not have chosen a better way than this six-opera celebration of Richard Strauss’s 150th anniversary. Mahler conducted here before moving to Hamburg, Vienna... Read more... |
Benvenuto Cellini, English National OperaFriday, 06 June 2014
Tumblers, confetti, stiltwalkers, flags, crowds, a giant skull, and that’s just the overture. If anyone thought that Terry Gilliam might struggle to match the scope, scale or impact of 2011’s Damnation of Faust with his follow-up then they’re... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Director Jonathan KentSunday, 01 June 2014
Jonathan Kent was an actor before he was a director. Indeed, he had not directed a single play when in his mid-40s he assumed control of the Almeida Theatre in 1990. By the time he and his co-artistic director Ian McDiarmid has left more than a... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Soprano Corinne WintersSunday, 01 June 2014
In February 2013 Corinne Winters created an absolute sensation in her operatic European debut when Peter Konwitschny’s starkly intense staging of Verdi’s La Traviata arrived at English National Opera. Vocally, physically, dramatically her Violetta... Read more... |
Peter Grimes, Grange ParkSaturday, 31 May 2014
It takes a brave opera company indeed to stage Peter Grimes this summer. Benjamin Britten’s 2013 centenary celebrations took us to “peak Britten”, with performances of all his major works as well as the unprecedented, outstanding Grimes on the Beach... Read more... |
Dialogues des Carmélites, Royal OperaFriday, 30 May 2014
Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites is a special and very particular opera. There is nothing else quite like it. Just as the drama - set to the composer’s own libretto - teeters between fear and faith, so too does Poulenc’s score, an extraordinary... Read more... |
Der Rosenkavalier, CBSO, Nelsons, Symphony Hall BirminghamSunday, 25 May 2014
A trio of Rosenkavaliers: what more could one want as we near Richard Strauss’s 150th birthday? Well, more of the less often performed operas, for a start. But as this is the Straussian cornucopia, it’s not going to tire those of us who love it... Read more... |
Moses und Aron, Welsh National OperaSunday, 25 May 2014
Schoenberg’s last, unfinished, opera, seldom staged, might almost have been written for the Welsh. At its heart is some of the most refined and intricate choral writing since Bach, but linked to stage directions so complicated that one wonders... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Lyon: Britten FêtedFriday, 23 May 2014
“Assez vu” (“seen enough”) is the first line of Benjamin Britten’s last Rimbaud setting in his electric song cycle Les Illuminations. Victor Hugo and Paul Verlaine had been the objects of his 14-year old attention in the Quatre Chansons françaises;... Read more... |
Caspar Gomez hits Glyndebourne Opera FestivalTuesday, 20 May 2014
It’s certainly different from the Glastonbury shuttle, I’ll tell you that. I’m sitting with Finetime on the minibus that takes festival-goers from Lewes Station to the opening day of Glyndebourne Opera Festival 2014.Finetime’s looking very much the... Read more... |
Eugene Onegin, GlyndebourneMonday, 19 May 2014
Is this the same Tatyana whose life depended on every word of her letter to straw idol Onegin at the 2009 Cardiff Singer of the World Competition? Then, Ekaterina Shcherbachenko – she’s since dropped the first “h” in transliteration – gave the most... Read more... |
