Opera
theartsdesk in Oslo: Barocking Handel in the Opera HouseSunday, 09 February 2014
Oslo is a winter wonderland, and adults seem to be outnumbered by children, flocking from all over Norway to Disney on Ice. It’s the deep snow and the silence in pockets of the city rather than the kids which make me wonder if anyone has set Handel’... Read more... |
Manon Lescaut, Welsh National OperaSunday, 09 February 2014
As before, WNO have a theme for their new opera season: this time it’s Fallen Women, a topic that might well attract the attention of the Equal Opportunities Commission. Surely men have the right to fall as well; we await, in June, The Fall of the... Read more... |
Macbeth, Opera NorthSaturday, 08 February 2014
The colours! Or the lack of them; Johan Engels’s neat, versatile set is decked out in 50 shades of black and grey. As are most of the cast, meaning that you begin to feel that you’re watching a grainy monochrome newsreel. Scotland has rarely looked... Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Royal OperaTuesday, 04 February 2014
If you don’t believe in the angels, or at least the good, of Don Giovanni, don’t stage it. Mozart may well be telling us, as Kasper Holten partly seems to be, that the antihero is a void, a mask-wearer and a creature of thrusting appetites, on his... Read more... |
Acis and Galatea, Mid Wales Opera, CardiffFriday, 31 January 2014
Handel’s “little opera”, as he called Acis and Galatea when he was composing it in 1718, probably survived while his true, full-length operas vanished from sight precisely because it was little, compact and manageable, like Purcell’s Dido or... Read more... |
Peter Grimes, English National OperaThursday, 30 January 2014
“Mind that door.” With the hurricane howling outside it’s no wonder the locals gathered in Auntie’s pub are yelling... but there is no door. Instead, a stage-wide sheet of corrugated iron rears up to let in Stuart Skelton’s storm-tossed Peter Grimes... Read more... |
Mark Wigglesworth for ENOThursday, 23 January 2014
This is great news. It should have been great news back in 2006-7, when Wigglesworth – Mark, not to be confused with the young, photogenic Ryan, composer and, when I last saw him, barely competent baton-wielder - was among the contenders for the... Read more... |
The Girl of the Golden West, Opera NorthWednesday, 22 January 2014
Puccini’s unlikely Spaghetti Western still convinces in Aletta Collins’ vivid new production. The incongruities in this uneven yet powerful work aren’t dodged but embraced. Most of them are musical: the sheer delight, for instance, of seeing stage... Read more... |
Addio, Claudio AbbadoMonday, 20 January 2014
“It is at the end that a composer can achieve his finest effects,“ declared Richard Strauss. He was thinking of his great operatic and symphonic epilogues, but apply that to the art of conducting, adjust the “at” to “towards”, and it applies... Read more... |
Manon, Royal OperaWednesday, 15 January 2014
Massenet had just two lingering thoughts about Manon when he wrote his memoirs in 1910, a quarter-century after the opera's first performance. First, he enjoyed reminding himself how many times it had been performed (a staggering 763 by the... Read more... |
Sonia Prina, Wigmore HallTuesday, 31 December 2013
The great Marilyn Horne used to joke that she was going to release an album entitled “Chestnuts for Chest Nuts”. She never did, but that leaves the door wide open for Sonia Prina whose dark, thrillingly low sound marks her out as the real deal, a... Read more... |
Classical and Opera 2013: A Year of AnniversariesSaturday, 28 December 2013
Which musical calendar year isn’t laden down with composer commemorations, too often a pretext for lazy and unimaginative planning? The last 12 months, with Verdi, Wagner and Britten as the birthday boys (in case you failed to hear), have raised the... Read more... |
