Recently in Reviews
25 Jul 2018
Fascinating programming from the BBC Philharmonic under their Finnish Chief Guest Conductor, John Storgårds. The mix of vocal music, arrangements and multiple pieces per half felt like a flashback to the early days of the Proms, offering eclectic mixes of vocal and instrumental soloists. »
24 Jul 2018
BBC Prom 11 Mahler Symphony no 8 in E flat major at the Royal Albert Hall, London, with Thomas Søndergård conducting the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and a huge cast. The nickname "Symphony of a Thousand" wasn't Mahler's choice but the invention of promoters eager to market it as a showpiece. »
22 Jul 2018
Mention ‘nineteenth-century English opera’ to most people, and
they will immediately think ‘Gilbert and Sullivan’. If they
really know their Gilbert and Sullivan, they’ll probably remember
that Sullivan always wanted to compose more serious operas, but that
Gilbert resisted this, believing they should ‘stick to their
last’: light, comic, tuneful satire. »
19 Jul 2018
There may be sixty or so operas by Donizetti to choose from, but if you’ve put together the remnants of another one, why not give everyone a chance to hear it? And so, Opera Rara brought L’Ange de Nisida to the concert stage last night, 180 years after it was composed for the Théâtre de la Renaissance in Paris, conductor Sir Mark Elder leading a team of bel canto soloists and the Choir and Orchestra of the Royal Opera House in a committed and at times stirring performance. »
18 Jul 2018
Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos is a strange operatic beast. Originally a Molière-Hofmannsthal-Strauss hybrid, the 1916 version presented in Vienna ditched Le bourgeois gentilhomme, which had preceded an operatic telling of the Greek myth of Ariadne and Theseus, and replaced it with a Prologue in which buffa met seria as competing factions prepared to present an entertainment for ‘the richest man in Vienna’. He’s a man who has ordered two entertainments, to follow an epicurean feast, and he wants these dramatic digestifs served simultaneously. »
18 Jul 2018
Stefan Herheim’s production of Debussy’s magnificent 1902 opera for Glyndebourne has not been universally acclaimed. The Royal Albert Hall brought with it, in this semi-staged production, a different set of problems - and even imitated some of the production’s original ones, notably the vast shadow of the organ which somewhat replicates Glyndebourne’s 1920’s Organ Room, and by a huge stretch of the imagination the forest in which so much of the opera’s action is set. »
17 Jul 2018
Sopranos Elise Brancheau and Shannon Jones, along with pianists Martin
Néron and Keith Chambers, presented a thrilling evening of
French-themed music in an evening entitled: “Salut à la
France,” at the South Oxford Space in Brooklyn this past Saturday,
July 14th. »
17 Jul 2018
Polly Graham’s vision of Dido and Aeneas is earthy, vigorous and gritty. The artistic director of Longborough Festival Opera has overseen a production which brings together professional soloists, students from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and a cast of more than 80 south-east London adults and children for this, the 12th, annual Blackheath Halls Community Opera. »
16 Jul 2018
The operatic extracts which comprised this year’s Jette Parker Young Artists Summer Performance seemed to be joined by a connecting thread - madness: whether that was the mischievousness of Zerbinetta’s comedy troupe, the insanity of Tom Rakewell, the metaphysical distress of Hamlet, or the mayhem prompted by Isabella’s arrival at Mustafà’s Ottoman palace, the ‘insanity’ was equally compelling. »
16 Jul 2018
This is the one where a very personable devil tells God that mankind is so far gone it isn’t worth his time to bother corrupting it further. »
15 Jul 2018
There seemed to me to be something distinctly Chaucerian about Martin Lloyd-Evans’ new production of Mascagni’s Isabeau (the first UK production of the opera) for Investec Opera Holland Park. »
15 Jul 2018
Anniversaries and commemorations will, as usual, feature significantly during the 2018 BBC Proms, with the works of Leonard Bernstein, Claude Debussy and Lili Boulanger all prominently programmed during the season’s myriad orchestral, vocal and chamber concerts. »
13 Jul 2018
Against the Grain Theatre brought its award winning adaptation of Gluck’s opera to the Banff Festival billed as “an electronic baroque burlesque descent into hell.” »
12 Jul 2018
What Seven Stones (the amazing accentus / axe 21), and Dido and Aeneas (the splendid Ensemble Pygmalion) and Orfeo & Majnun (the ensemble [too many to count] of eleven local amateur choruses) share, and virtually nothing else, is spectacular use of chorus. »
11 Jul 2018
From the Bayerisches Staatsoper Munich, Wagner Parsifal with a dream cast - René Pape, Jonas Kaufmann and Nina Stemme, Christian Gerhaher and Wolfgang Koch, conducted by Kirill Petrenko, directed by Pierre Audi. The production is vintage Audi - stylized, austere, but solidly thought-through. »
10 Jul 2018
Jonathan Dove’s innovative opera Flight is being lavished with an absolutely riveting new production at Des Moines Metro Opera’s resoundingly successful 2018 Festival.
»
09 Jul 2018
Like a fizzy bottle of champagne, Des Moines Metro Opera uncorked a zesty tasting of Johan Strauss’s vintage Die Fledermaus (The Bat). »
09 Jul 2018
Robert Carson’s 2012 ROH Falstaff is a bit of a hotchpotch, but delightful nevertheless. The panelled oak, exuding Elizabethan ambience, of the first Act’s gravy-stained country club reeks of the Wodehouse-ian 1930s, but has also has to serve as the final Act’s grubby stable and the Forest of Windsor, while the central Act is firmly situated in the domestic perfection of Alice Ford’s 1950s kitchen. »
08 Jul 2018
Ingenious Des Moines Metro Opera continued its string of site-specific hits with an endearing production of Aaron Copland’s The Tender Land on the grounds of the Maytag Dairy farm. »
08 Jul 2018
Let me get right to the point: This is the Rusalka I have been waiting for all my life. »
07 Jul 2018
Prokofiev’s Fiery Angel is rarely performed. This new Aix Festival production to be shared with Warsaw’s Teatr Wielki exemplifies why. »
06 Jul 2018
Yes, of course British stage director Katie Mitchell served up Richard Strauss’ uber tragic Ariadne on Naxos at a dinner table. Over the past few years Mme. Mitchell has staged quite a few household tragedies at the Aix Festival, mostly at dinner tables, though some on doorsteps. »
06 Jul 2018
Having premiered Roxanna Panufnik’s opera Silver Birch in 2017 as part of its work with local community groups, Garsington Opera’s 2018 season included its first commission for the main opera season. David Sawer's The Skating Rink premiered at Garsington Opera this week; the opera is based on the novel by Chilean writer Roberto Bolano with a libretto by playwright Rory Mullarkey. »
05 Jul 2018
The Princeton Festival brings a run of three high-quality opera
performances to town each summer, alternating between a modern opera and a
traditional warhorse. John Adams’ Nixon in China has been
announced for next summer. So this year Princeton got Giacomo
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, for which the Festival
assembled an impressive cast and delivered a polished performance. »
05 Jul 2018
Many of the ingredients for a memorable concert were there, or so they
initially seemed to be. Alas, ultimately what we learned more clearly than
anything else was that the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s
new Principal Artist, András Schiff, is no conductor. »
05 Jul 2018
It came as quite a surprise throughout much of the first half of this recital of French song, that it was the piano-playing of Susan Manoff that made the greater impression upon me than the singing of Véronique Gens. »
03 Jul 2018
What might have been? Such was a thought that came to my mind more than once during this, the premiere of Glyndebourne’s new Pelléas et Mélisande. What might have been if Stefan Herheim had not changed his Konzept so late in the day? (I had actually forgotten about that until reminded during the interval, yet had already began to wonder whether the production had been, especially for him, unusually rushed.) »
01 Jul 2018
There is something very Danish about this Don Giovanni. It isn’t just that the director, Kasper Holten is a Dane, it’s also that the existential, moral and psychological questions Holten asks point to Kierkegaard who wrote of the fusion of the erotic and demonic in this opera in his work Either/Or (1843). However, I’ve rarely, if ever, encountered a production of Don Giovanni - even Bieito’s notorious one for ENO - where Mozart comes off as second best. »
01 Jul 2018
Schoenberg Gurrelieder at the Royal Festival Hall, with Esa-Pekka Salonen, demonstrating how well the Philharmonia Orchestra has absorbed Schoenberg's idiom. A blazing performance, formidably dramatic, executed with stunning assurance. Salonen has made his mark on the Philharmonia through in-depth explorations of the 20th century repertoire he loves so well. »
30 Jun 2018
London may have been basking in the golden glow of summer sunshine this week, but things have been darkly gothic on the capital’s opera scene. »
29 Jun 2018
There was a palpable anticipatory buzz in the audience well before one note was heard of Pacific Opera Project’s adventurous take on Rossini’s seldom staged La Gazzetta (The Newspaper). »
29 Jun 2018
Dangerous Liasions with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Joined by Les Corps Éloquents (Hubert Hazebrouq, choreographer, Irène Feste and Romain Arreghini), the OAE surpassed even their own high standards, demonstrating the link between music and dance in the French baroque. »
27 Jun 2018
Six years ago composer George Benjamin and playwright Martin Crimp gave the
world Written on Skin. It caused a sensation at its unveiling at
the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Hot on the heels of its world premiere at the
Royal Opera House in London, the composer is now conducting their second
full-length opera, Lessons in Love and Violence, at the Holland
Festival, where he is this year’s Composer in Focus. »
