Recently in Reviews
24 Feb 2016
In the 17th century, sacred vocal music was not just for public worship in
church but also for private devotion within a secular setting, and this concert
at the Wigmore Hall by Theatre of the Ayre under its director
Elizabeth Kenny transported us from Chapel Royal to domestic chamber. »
22 Feb 2016
In a world opera schedule packed with safe bread-and-butter warhorses, Hawaii Opera Theatre gambled on a Britten rarity and came up smelling as sweet as a tuberose lei. »
19 Feb 2016
Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based their libretto for Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen on a novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. On March 3, 1875, Carmen was premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris. »
19 Feb 2016
Napoleon I (Bonaparte) was known as the Aigle (eagle), his son by Marie Louise (of the Hapsburgs) later became called the Aiglon (eaglet). At birth he was dubbed the King of Rome by his father. Unofficially and very briefly he was Napoleon II. Exiled in Austria he was officially titled the Duke of Reichstadt and the Prince of Parma. »
18 Feb 2016
Notable first performance of Bellini's opera by ENO, with a striking assumption of the title role from the young American soprano »
18 Feb 2016
The Wigmore Hall’s chronological journey through the complete
lieder of Franz Schubert continued with this recital by tenor Ian Bostridge
and pianist Graham Johnson. The duo gave a thought-provoking performance
which was notable for the searching dialectic between simplicity and
complexity which it illuminated. »
17 Feb 2016
Peter Greenaway’s short film M is for Man, Music and Mozart, for which the Dutch composer Louis Andriessen composed the score, was commissioned to mark the bicentenary anniversary of Mozart’s death in 1791. »
17 Feb 2016
Together with fellow playwrights Émile Augier and Alexandre Dumas fils, Victorien Sardou dominated the French stage in the late nineteenth century. Although Sardou was an excellent craftsman who was elected to the Académie Francaise in 1877, his reliance on theatrical devices caused his plays to go out of style after the turn of the twentieth century. »
15 Feb 2016
The background of Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco, currently being presented at Lyric Opera of Chicago, draws on the struggle between Babylonian and Hebrew forces, emphasized in this production graphically by alternating scripts in cuneiform and Hebrew projections. »
15 Feb 2016
Whilst the Arts Council has been doing its best to destroy the English National Opera, ENO has fought back in the best way possible: in the theatre. »
15 Feb 2016
On Saturday, January 23, 2016, at the University of Arizona’s Crowder Hall, mezzo-soprano Jamie Barton and soprano Amber Wagner gave a delightful recital entitled From Baroque to Broadway. The Baroque was Benjamin Britten’s realization of three Henry Purcell songs: Music for a While, Lost is my Quiet, and What Can We Poor Females Do? »
15 Feb 2016
The route that Stuart MacRae and Louse Welsh have taken for their first full-length opera is reassuringly traditional in terms of getting experience of the genre, whilst the resulting work shows itself to be admirably anything but. »
08 Feb 2016
Opera Philadelphia deserves congratulations on yet another coup. The company
co-commissioned Cold Mountain, an opera by Jennifer Higdon based on
Gene Scheer’s adaptation of Charles Frazier’s celebrated Civil War
epic. »
08 Feb 2016
For their first of two recitals at the Wigmore Hall, Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber devised an interesting programme - popular Schubert mixed with songs by Wolfgang Rihm and by Huber himself. »
08 Feb 2016
There are not many opera productions that you would cross oceans to see. Graham
Vick’s Götterdämmerung in Sicily however compelled such a voyage. »
05 Feb 2016
Premièred in 1877 at Offenbach’s own Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens, Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’Étoile has a libretto, by Eugène Leterrier and Albert Vanloo, which stirs the blackly comic, the farcical and the bizarre into a surreal melange, blending contemporary satire with the frankly outlandish.
»
02 Feb 2016
Robert Ashley’s opera-novel Quicksand makes for a novel
experience »
01 Feb 2016
One of the leading Russian composers of his generation, Alexander
Raskatov’s reputation in the UK and western Europe derives from several,
recent large-scale compositions, such as his reconstruction of Alfred
Schnittke’s Ninth Symphony from a barely legible manuscript (the work was
first performed in 2007 in the Dresden Frauenkirche by the Dresden Philharmonic
under Dennis Russell Davies), and his 2010 opera A Dog’s Heart,
based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s satire (which was directed by Simon McBurney
at English National Opera in 2010, following the opera’s premiere at
Netherlands Opera earlier that year). »
01 Feb 2016
I’m not sure that St John’s Smith Square was the most
appropriate venue for Opera Danube’s latest production: Jacques
Offenbach’s satirical frolic, Orpheus in the Underworld. »
31 Jan 2016
This nasty little opera evening in Lyon lived up to the opera’s initial reputation as pure pornophony. This is the erotic Shostakovich of the D minor cello sonata, it is the sarcastic and complicated Shostakovich of The Nose . . . »
26 Jan 2016
During December 2015 and presently in January Lyric Opera of Chicago has featured the world premiere of the opera Bel Canto, with music by Jimmy López and libretto by Nilo Cruz, based on the novel by Ann Patchett. »
22 Jan 2016
Christmas at the Royal Opera House is all about magic, mystery and miracles: as represented by the conjuror’s exploits in The Nutcracker — with its Kingdom of Sweets and Sugar Plum Fairy — or, as in the Linbury Theatre this year, the fantastical adventures of the Firework-Maker’s Daughter, Lila, and her companions — a lovesick elephant, swashbuckling pirates, tropical beasts and Fire-Fiends. »
21 Jan 2016
The title role is a deciding factor in Madama Butterfly. Despite a
last-minute conductor cancellation, last Saturday’s concert performance
at the Concertgebouw was a resounding success, thanks to Lianna
Haroutounian’s opulent, heart-stealing Cio-Cio-San. »
21 Jan 2016
With this performance of vocal and instrumental works composed by the
10-year-old Mozart and his contemporaries during 1766, Classical Opera entered
the second year of their 27-year project, MOZART 250, which is
designed to ‘contextualise the development and influences of [sic] the
composer’s artistic personality’ and, more audaciously, to
‘follow the path that subsequently led to some of the greatest
cornerstones of our civilisation’. »
14 Jan 2016
Luca Pisaroni and Wolfram Rieger were due to give the latest installment in the Wigmore Hall's complete Schubert songs series, but both had to cancel at short notice. Fortunately, the Wigmore Hall rises to such contingencies, and gave us Benjamin Appl and Jonathan Ware. Since there's a huge buzz about Appl, this was an opportunity to hear more of what he can do. »
13 Jan 2016
The phrase ‘Sunday afternoon concert’ may suggest light, post-prandial entertainment, but soprano Gemma Lois Summerfield and her accompanist, Simon Lepper, swept away any such conceptions in this demanding programme at St. John’s Smith Square. »
13 Jan 2016
When, o when, will someone put Peter Sellars and his compendium of clichés
out of our misery? »
24 Dec 2015
This recording, made in the Adrian Boult Hall at the Birmingham Conservatoire of Music in June 2014, is the fourth disc in SOMM’s series of recordings with Paul Spicer and the Birmingham Conservatoire Chamber Choir. »
22 Dec 2015
Having recently followed some by-ways through the music of Purcell, Monteverdi and Cavalli, L’Arpeggiata turned the spotlight on traditional folk music in this characteristically vibrant and high-spirited performance at the Wigmore Hall. »
22 Dec 2015
Edward Gardner brought all his experience as a choral and opera conductor to bear in this stirring performance of Michael Tippett’s A Child of Our Time at the Barbican Hall, with a fine cast of soloists, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and BBC Symphony Chorus. »
22 Dec 2015
‘Apt for voices or viols’: eager to maximise sales among the domestic market in Elizabethan England, publishers emphasised that the music contained in collections such as Thomas Morley’s First Book of Madrigals to Four Voices of 1594 was suitable for performance by any combination of singers and players. »
18 Dec 2015
It was a single title but a double bill and there was far more happening than Gordon Getty and Claude Debussy. Starting with Edgar Allen Poe. »
16 Dec 2015
For its latest production of the current season Lyric Opera of Chicago is presenting Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe) featuring Renée Fleming /Nicole Cabell as the widow Hanna Glawari and Thomas Hampson as Count Danilo Danilovich. »
16 Dec 2015
Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has been a regular favourite at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam since 1996. Her verastile concerts are always carefully constructed and delivered with irrepressible energy and artistic
commitment. »
10 Dec 2015
When Italian director Damiano Michieletto visited Covent Garden in June this year, he spiced Rossini’s Guillaume Tell with a graphic and, many felt, gratuitous rape scene that caused outrage and protest. »
09 Dec 2015
Verdi Giovanna d'Arco at Teatro alla Scala, Milan, starting the new season. Primas at La Scala are a state occasion, attended by the President of Italy and other dignitaries. »
06 Dec 2015
This performance by countertenor Iestyn Davies and tenor Allan Clayton was a
stirring celebration of the diversity and continuity that characterises vocal
settings of English texts by English and American composers, past and present.
Imaginatively and intelligently devised by pianist James Baillieu, the
programme demonstrated the affective power of music ranging from the simplest
to the most sophisticated forms of vocal expression, and encompassed art-song,
folk-song, realisations, quasi-operatic mini-drama and spiritual
meditation. »
06 Dec 2015
At the Wigmore Hall, the London premiere of a major new work by Howard Skempton, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, with Roderick Williams and BCMG, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.
»
05 Dec 2015
A fairy tale that looks like clay animation come to life, terrifies and
enchants, and rakes up heaps of middle class guilt—this is Dutch National
Opera’s new production of Hänsel und Gretel, set on the
most attractive rubbish tip you will ever come across. »
