18th century
Giulio Cesare, The English Concert, Bicket, Barbican review - 10s across the board in perfect HandelMonday, 12 May 2025
Is Giulio Cesare in Egitto, to give the full title, Handel’s best and shapeliest opera? Glyndebourne’s revival of the legendary David McVicar production last year made it seem so, not least thanks to the presence of two of last night’s soloists,... Read more... |
Pimpinone, Royal Opera in the Linbury Theatre review - farce with a sting in its tailSaturday, 03 May 2025
Full marks to the Royal Opera for good planning: one first night knocking us all sideways with the darkest German operatic tragedy followed by another letting us off the hook with a short comedy by Wagner’s compatriot Telemann. The premiere of... Read more... |
La Serenissima, Wigmore Hall review - a convivial guide to 18th century BolognaWednesday, 30 April 2025
When Giuseppe Torelli made the journey from his birthplace of Verona to Bologna in the late 17th century, the trumpet was still seen as something of a brash outsider, suitable for military displays but not for sophisticated music ensembles. Within... Read more... |
St Matthew Passion, Dunedin Consort, Butt, Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh review - life, meaning and depthSunday, 13 April 2025
I was in Germany last week, and nearly every town I went to was advertising a St Matthew or a St John Passion taking place in the week up to Easter. It says something about how deeply engrained Bach’s Passion settings are in German culture that they... Read more... |
St Matthew Passion, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin review - the heights rescaledSaturday, 12 April 2025
When you’ve already come as close as possible to perfection in the greatest masterpiece, why risk a repeat performance with a difference? Because Bach’s St Matthew Passion needs to be an annual fixture without routine, and because inspirational IBO... Read more... |
Stiletto, Charing Cross Theatre review - new musical excessWednesday, 02 April 2025
That friend you have who hates musicals – probably male, probably straight, probably not seen one since The Sound of Music on BBC 1 after the Queen’s Speech in 1978 – well, don’t send them to Charing Cross Theatre for this show. But that other... Read more... |
Tales of Apollo and Hercules, London Handel Festival review - compelling elements, but a failed experimentMonday, 31 March 2025
Over the last three years of the London Handel Festival, two experimental productions have proved to be highlights – not just of the festival itself – but of the musical year. In 2023, Adele Thomas’s In The Realms of Sorrow brought sweat,... Read more... |
La finta giardiniera, The Mozartists, Cadogan Hall review - blooms in the wild gardenWednesday, 26 March 2025
Just now, the notion of a long-term project that concludes in 2041 sounds like an optimistic bet on the far future worthy of some 18th-century Enlightenment philosophe – Voltaire’s Dr Pangloss, maybe. The musicians of The Mozartists are clearly... Read more... |
Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, St George’s Hanover Square review - Handel’s journey of a soulThursday, 20 March 2025
Imagine if Bach had set Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili’s allegory of Beauty breaking free from Pleasure with the guidance of Time and Enlightenment: he’d probably have hit the spiritual highs. The 21-year-old Handel, at least as this multifaceted... Read more... |
The Marriage of Figaro, Welsh National Opera review - no concessions and no holds barredSaturday, 08 February 2025
Drained as they are at present of crucial funds, WNO are managing to put on only two operas this spring, and spaced out to the point where it could hardly be called a season. For their new Peter Grimes we must wait till April. Meanwhile we can... Read more... |
The Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera review - long on laughs, short on kerb appealThursday, 06 February 2025
Who’s in and who’s not – on the secret, the joke, the relationship, the family, the club? That’s the fulcrum of Joe Hill-Gibbins’ ingeniously simple Figaro for English National Opera. A white box and a row of doors supply the only set to speak of... Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, The Mozartists, Page, Cadogan Hall review - cogency, intelligence and reverenceWednesday, 23 October 2024
Ten years ago, Ian Page launched his and the Mozartists’ (then Classical Opera’s) remarkable endeavour to play music by WA Mozart 250 years after it was written, starting with a programme of material from 1765 by eight-year-old Mozart, and his... Read more... |
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