ENO
The Elixir of Love, English National OperaSaturday, 13 February 2010
It takes roughly, ooh, about five minutes for Jonathan Miller's new production of Donizetti's The Elixir of Love (whose 1950s set had the audience gawping smilingly within seconds) to start electrifying the nerve-endings into orgasmic spasm.... Read more... |
Lucia di Lammermoor, ENOThursday, 04 February 2010
Is Donizetti's fustian operatic mash-up of Sir Walter Scott worth staging seriously? On CD, stupenda Sutherland and divina Callas continue to give us goosebumps with their darting, florid stabs at poor mad Lucia. If the difficult-to-achieve match of... Read more... |
Ockham's Razor, London International Mime FestivalMonday, 11 January 2010
“Don’t look down,” comes the exhortation from somewhere on the floor. "Look ahead." I am testing out a new bit of kit, a large wooden cylinder encased in a metal frame, suspended via ropes and pulleys from a high ceiling. The diameter is big enough... Read more... |
Classical and Opera 2000-9: The Highs and LowsSunday, 27 December 2009
No great new movements or radically transformational figures emerged to dominate classical music in the Noughties (not even him up there). Just one small nagging question bedevilled us: will the art form survive? Well, it has. What appeared to... Read more... |
Opera for Everybody: The Story of English National OperaFriday, 18 December 2009
Love it or loathe it, the powerhouse effect is back at English National Opera. The era which gave its name to the sobriquet, that challenging time in the 1980s and early 1990s when Davids Pountney, Alden and Fielding skewed the stage and Mark Elder... Read more... |
Messiah, ENOFriday, 27 November 2009
There are so many ways a dramatic production of Messiah can go wrong it is almost unbearable to think about it. Certainly, there was a palpable buzz of nervousness in the Coliseum about last night’s audience as they took their seats. Did English... Read more... |
Production gallery: Duke Bluebeard's Castle, ENOSunday, 08 November 2009
English National Opera's new production of Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle is photographed here by Johan Persson. Directed by Daniel Kramer, designed by Giles Cadle and lit by Peter Mumford, it updates Charles Perrault's 1697 fairytale to a... Read more... |
Duke Bluebeard's Castle/Rite of Spring, ENOSaturday, 07 November 2009
There are horrors in the world so vile that few of us want to think about them. None more so than such cases as Josef Fritzl - or Jaycee Lee Dugard, or Arcedio Alvarez, or Raymond Gouardo, or Wolfgang Priklopil, or Marc Dutroux... but you get the... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Messiah, ENOThursday, 05 November 2009
With its powerfully emotive stagings of Bach's St John Passion and Verdi's Requiem English National Opera has built something of a reputation for bringing sacred masterworks to the secular stage. Award-winning director Deborah Warner, conductor and... Read more... |
The Seckerson Tapes: Duke Bluebeard's Castle, The Rite of Spring, ENOTuesday, 27 October 2009
theartsdesk's podcasts with broadcaster Edward Seckerson continue with a look at the English National Opera's new production of two 20th-century masterpieces: Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle and Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. Daniel Kramer takes... Read more... |
The Turn of the Screw, ENOFriday, 23 October 2009Benjamin Britten’s The Turn of the Screw is first and foremost a psychological horror. And psychological horrors are all about rocking the mental boat. Capsizing the mental boat. Sinking the mental boat. David McVicar’s production of The Turn of the... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Sir Charles MackerrasThursday, 22 October 2009At 84 years of age, Sir Charles Mackerras is one of the best-respected and best-loved operatic conductors working in the world today. He conducts Benjamin Britten's The Turn of the Screw for the English National Opera tonight and, despite bouts of... Read more... |
