18th century
The Holburne Museum, Bath: In With the NewSaturday, 09 July 2011
Gleaming, shimmering, full of pizzazz, glitz and unashamed bling, although of the 18th-century sort, as befits its role as the most cheerfully mixed up and glittering show of baubles in Bath, the Holburne Museum reopened in May after three years... Read more... |
The Beggar's Opera, Regent's Park Open Air TheatreTuesday, 28 June 2011
John Gay’s 1728 satirical drama was the first ballad opera. The vernacular work not only cocked a snook at the Italian operas that were so in vogue in 18th-century London, but it also lampooned Whig politician Sir Robert Walpole and the British love... Read more... |
Le Cercle de L'Harmonie, Rhorer, Barbican HallTuesday, 28 June 2011
While we are far from lacking in top early music ensembles in the UK, there’s no denying that the French have a special affinity for this repertoire. While The Academy of Ancient Music and The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment are virtuosic... Read more... |
Così fan tutte, Longborough FestivalFriday, 17 June 2011
The extraordinary Longborough Opera Festival is with us again and for the next six weeks, in Martin and Lizzie Graham’s Palladian barn theatre near Stow-on-the-Wold. This year the world’s unlikeliest Ring cycle reaches Siegfried. But the... Read more... |
Luise Miller, Donmar WarehouseTuesday, 14 June 2011
Time lurches when you see a historical play. But is it a case of autre temps, autres moeurs, or of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose? Either way, the history needs to slap your face hard with recognition. Schiller’s Luise Miller is a 1784... Read more... |
Idomeneo, Barbican HallSunday, 12 June 2011
Mozart's Idomeneo is subjected to a famous bit of abuse in Milos Forman's Amadeus. "A most tiresome piece," a courtier critic sniffs. "Too much spice. Too many notes." As it happens, not a wholly inaccurate statement. The work is quite an exotic... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Göttingen: Handel With an UmlautSunday, 12 June 2011
Georg Friedrich Händel of Halle probably never came here. Other great men certainly did: long after the official foundation of Göttingen's Georg August University in 1734 - the year in which the composer wrote a masterpiece, Ariodante, in another... Read more... |
The Magic Flute, Garsington OperaFriday, 03 June 2011
Tamino and Pamina, in Mozart’s great masonic opera, go through fire and water, as well as trials spiritual and emotional, before achieving their sunlit triumph at the end of it all. They would have sympathy with Anthony Whitworth-Jones and his... Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne Festival OperaMonday, 23 May 2011
Two 1950s Mozarts in one weekend might seem like pressing the contemporaneity of great art unnecessarily far. But Jonathan Kent’s Glyndebourne Don Giovanni, revived on Sunday, is a much less crude update than the WNO Così. True, the dramatis... Read more... |
Così fan tutte, Welsh National Opera, CardiffSaturday, 21 May 2011
“I’ve seen an asp, a hydra, a basilisk”, Fiordiligi sings as she tries to ward off Ferrando in the second act of Mozart’s cynical dissection of true love. Benjamin Davis’s new production for WNO converts these beasts into a crocodile, a dragon,... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Cuenca: Religious Music WeekSaturday, 23 April 2011
It’s Holy Wednesday in Cuenca, and going round the corner into Cathedral Square I’m surrounded by hordes of guys in multicoloured mufti who look like the Ku Klux Klan, with unnecessarily pointy hoods. Twenty of them are carrying a heavy float with a... Read more... |
Manon, Royal BalletThursday, 21 April 2011
Manon, Manon, the little minx. Here she comes again - for the 223rd time, last night - and like the legendary ladies of her trade, scrubs up fresh and newly captivating, as if she’d only just skipped off the carriage from the convent. MacMillan’s... Read more... |
