Glyndebourne
Best of 2017: OperaTuesday, 26 December 2017
It may not have been the best year for eye-popping productions; even visionary director Richard Jones fell a bit short with a tame-ish Royal Opera Bohème, though his non-operatic The Twilight Zone is something else. Instead there's been time to... Read more... |
La clemenza di Tito, Glyndebourne review - fine musical manoeuvres in the darkThursday, 27 July 2017
So much light in the Glyndebourne production of Brett Dean's Hamlet; so much darkness in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito according to director Claus Guth. Something is irredeemably rotten in the state of ancient Rome, at odds with the fundamental... Read more... |
Robin Ticciati on conducting Mozart - 'I wanted to create a revolution in the minds of the players'Wednesday, 26 July 2017
When Glyndebourne's Music Director Robin Ticciati conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment in the new production of Mozart's La clemenza di Tito starting tonight, you can be sure that it will sound utterly fresh, startling even. As did... Read more... |
Ariadne auf Naxos, Glyndebourne review – seriously compelling revivalTuesday, 27 June 2017
It’s often said that Ariadne auf Naxos is all about The Composer – not only Richard Strauss but an affectionate parody of his younger self – and Katharina Thoma takes this idea seriously in her Glyndebourne production. In the role, Angela Brower... Read more... |
Hamlet, Glyndebourne review - integrity if not genius in Brett Dean's scoreMonday, 12 June 2017
Nature’s germens tumble all together rather readily in more recent operatic Shakespeare. Following the overblown storm before the storm of Reimann’s Lear and the premature angst of Ryan Wigglesworth’s The Winter’s Tale, what's rotten in the state of... Read more... |
Hipermestra / La Traviata, GlyndebourneMonday, 22 May 2017
A Saudi princess in her white wedding dress digs her own grave as men pile up stones to hurl at her head — next, an Isis fighter is stabbing a knife at her neck to decapitate her. Ah, the fate of the heroine of the average baroque ... Read more... |
Madama Butterfly, Glyndebourne TourSaturday, 15 October 2016
What would Glyndebourne, staging Madama Butterfly for the first time, bring to Puccini's most heartbreaking tragedy? Subtle realism, perhaps? Certainly the composer, along with his superb librettists Giacosa and Illica, offers plenty of... Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, GlyndebourneFriday, 12 August 2016
Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is too other-worldly to have anything as mortal as a musical heartbeat. Pulsing through it instead are musical quivers, jolts of eerie energy first heard in the opening cello glissandi. Denaturing the instrument,... Read more... |
Béatrice et Bénédict, GlyndebourneThursday, 28 July 2016
Locations count for little in most of Shakespeare's comedies. Only a literal-minded director would, for instance, insist on Messina, Sicily as the setting for Much Ado About Nothing. In Béatrice et Bénédict, on the other hand, Berlioz injects his... Read more... |
The Cunning Little Vixen, GlyndebourneMonday, 13 June 2016
Is The Cunning Little Vixen a jolly children’s pantomime, or is it a searching study of issues of life and death, Man and Nature? The answer, naturally, is that it’s both. Children dress up as animals, and sing and prance about. But at the same time... Read more... |
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, GlyndebourneSunday, 22 May 2016
A celebration of the power of words and music (leaving aside, briefly, that more troubling business about the Fatherland), Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is a natural opener for the summer opera season. Art triumphs over all, but in David... Read more... |
The Moderate Soprano, Hampstead TheatreFriday, 30 October 2015
Remember back when David Hare was left-wing? I’m not sure that he does. Between the affectionate, bittersweet nostalgia of South Downs and now The Moderate Soprano – a stroll through the verdant history of England’s most... Read more... |
