Recently in Reviews
02 Jul 2012
Embodying a range of iconic female characters from history, literature and song — both the ‘good’ and the ‘not-so-good’ — Susan Graham delivered a wonderfully suave and entertaining performance before a delighted Wigmore Hall audience. »
02 Jul 2012
Perfection. A seldom used term in critiques of opera performances. There it was, almost (and will be, maybe). »
28 Jun 2012
Based on performances given in Summer 2010 at the Lucerne Festival, this recording of Beethoven’s Fidelio is an admirable recording that captures the vitality of the work as conducted by Claudio Abbado. »
28 Jun 2012
Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) was one of the most popular composers of his day in Poland, and of the many works he wrote for the stage, two are performed from time to time, Halka (1848) and Strazny dwór [The Haunted Manor] (1865). »
28 Jun 2012
The Polish alto Jadwiga Rappé is a familiar voice in various stage and concert works, and the recent release of a selection of songs by Stanisław Moniuszko (1819-1872) is an opportunity to hear her performing artsongs. »
27 Jun 2012
Forget about picking a desert island opera, I want Opera Theatre of St. Louis as my desert island opera company.
»
27 Jun 2012
A sensational Les Troyens at the Royal Opera House, London. Berlioz, who understood theatrical gestures so well, builds his opera around the most audacious dramatic device in ancient history: the Trojan Horse. »
26 Jun 2012
First staged at Manchester’s 2011 international festival, Dr Dee
is a theatrical work based on the life of Renaissance cosmographer and
charlatan, John Dee. »
26 Jun 2012
At the Wigmore Hall, there’s long been a tradition of Swedish song. We’ve heard many of the greats, Anne Sofie von Otter, Barbara Bonney and others. Miah Persson and Roger Vignoles are in this constellation. »
26 Jun 2012
Billy Budd, foretopman — and self-styled ‘King of the Birds’ — may yearn for premonition to captain of the mizzen top, but there few spirits that fly afloat or soar in David Alden’s dark, oppressive new production of Benjamin Britten’s Billy Budd. »
15 Jun 2012
A feast for the eyes, a feast for the ears, a Flute from America’s heartland that goes directly to your heart. »
15 Jun 2012
Oliver Knussen’s two operas based on books by Maurice Sendak opened this year’s Aldeburgh Music Festival in exuberant style.
»
13 Jun 2012
Fanfares that celebrate soldiers with plumed helmets by a composer who donned a helmet (metaphorically) — Verdi the operatic father of the Risorgimento! »
11 Jun 2012
Are my expectations too high when it comes to Mozart’s operas in general,
and to Così fan tutte in general? Probably. Should they be?
Certainly. »
09 Jun 2012
John Adams’ Nixon in China is an amazing, riveting piece of music, and compelling theater to boot.
»
09 Jun 2012
Over 60 composers (including Beethoven) wrote music inspired by Metastasio’s L’olimpiade. »
09 Jun 2012
The pavilion at Garsington Opera at Wormsley is stunningly beautiful. Just being there is an experience, which is why the social aspect is so rewarding. »
08 Jun 2012
There are many different ways to analyze the health of New York City. My personal measurements judge the town thus: How many aspiring artsy kids are forced to share a single apartment in an outer borough while they “find themselves” and how many small but immensely able opera companies are functional at any given time. »
05 Jun 2012
“I can guess what you are hiding.
Bloodstain on your warrior’s weapons.
Blood upon your crown of glory.
Red the soil around your flowers.
Red the shade your cloud was throwing.
Now I know it all, oh, Bluebeard.” »
05 Jun 2012
The Los Angeles opera company ended its 2011-2012 season with Giacomo
Puccini’s long-loved La Bohème, in a long-lived production. What is
it about this opera that keeps old loves alive? »
04 Jun 2012
Detlev Glanert’s Caligula at the ENO shows how powerful modern opera can be. Caligula was a tyrant, but this opera isn’t sensationalist. »
04 Jun 2012
Kudos to the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and Gustavo Dudamel for their courageous plan to present semi staged performances of the Mozart/Da Ponte trilogy of Italian operas with the assistance of outstanding set and costume designers and directors. »
04 Jun 2012
In David McVicar’s staging of Strauss’s disturbing opera, first seen at
Covent Garden in 2008 and now enjoying its second revival, Salome’s descent
down the Stygian staircase is a literal drop into a subterranean slaughterhouse
and an ethical fall into the delights and depravity of her of burgeoning yet deadly sexuality.
»
04 Jun 2012
Donizetti’s Maria Padilla received a concert performance with the Chelsea Opera Group. »
04 Jun 2012
A fascinating evening of arias and readings on the theme of Handel’s “rival queens”, Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni.
»
04 Jun 2012
Canadian Opera Company’s diverse May offerings included some superlatively sung Handel, a galvanizing star turn from a rising tenor talent, and a well-matched veristic double bill of tragedy and comedy. »
31 May 2012
Yannis Kokkos originally directed and designed Tristan und Isolde as a co-production for Welsh National Opera and Scottish Opera nearly 20 years ago. The production’s latest revival, directed by Peter Watson, was premiered at the Wales Millennium Centre on 19 May 2012. »
30 May 2012
Glyndebourne’s 2012 season started in great style with Leoš Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen. Its rapturous reception would suggest that this could become a Glyndebourne perennial. »
25 May 2012
Originally released on multiple discs in 1981 this reissue on two CDs is a comprehensive collection of art songs by Italian and French composers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. »
22 May 2012
Iestyn Davies’ Wigmore Hall recital, ‘History Repeating’, may have explored various composers’ engagement with, and reinterpretation and reinvigoration of, music of the past, but Davies himself is very much the countertenor of the moment, and undoubtedly an exciting and fulfilling future lies ahead. »
21 May 2012
You never can tell. I would never have predicted which opera would be my favourite of the seven operas programmed this season by the Canadian Opera Company. »
19 May 2012
The Met saved the best of the season for the end of it, revivals of their first-rate productions of two twentieth-century masterpieces, Jánaček’s Makropoulos Case and Britten’s Billy Budd. »
19 May 2012
It is not long into Act One of Mignon at Geneva’s Grand Theatre when Diana Damrau glides on stage as Philine, commands our rapt attention, and sweeps all before her. »
17 May 2012
Véronique Gens’s recital at the Wigmore Hall, London, was an almost ideal distillation of the belle époque in song. »
12 May 2012
In this, the second of two LSO concerts in which Péter Eötvös replaced
Pierre Boulez, one continued to feel the loss of the latter in his repertoire,
yet one equally continued to value his replacement, very much his own
man. »
09 May 2012
An energetic and exceptionally entertaining production of Così fan tutte sung in English and set during World War II, when the Americans often got the girls. »
09 May 2012
Any performance of Philip Glass’ epic Einstein on the Beach (1976) is a major event. The work’s duration is around five hours and it is directed to be performed without interval (although see below — we had one). »
07 May 2012
Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ classic play The Barber of
Seville, set by Rossini to perfectly paced and irresistibly comic music,
was first performed in Rome in 1816, and remains one of the world’s favorite
operas. »
02 May 2012
This year’s Kathleen Ferrier Awards final was both a competition and a
celebration, marking as it did the centenary anniversary of the great singer’s birth. »
01 May 2012
Manitoba Opera laid aside all stereotypes about opera being stuffy and inaccessible with its feel-good production of Donizetti’s 1840 comic opera Daughter of the Regiment. »
01 May 2012
ENO’s peculiar decision not to stage any Wagner during its 2012-13 season, that is the season in which the greater part of Wagner’s bicentenary falls, is at least mitigated by a new production of The Flying Dutchman during this preceding season. »
01 May 2012
The double bill of Zemlinsky’s A Florentine Tragedy with
Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, currently being presented by the Canadian Opera Company, is a marriage made in heaven, a pair of complementary opposites who seem to belong together. »
26 Apr 2012
Massenet’s Manon succeeds in the theater when the soprano has
a real sense of the role and how she wants to present it. »
26 Apr 2012
Croatian National Opera, in collaboration with Würzburg’s (Germany) Mainfranken Theater has made quite a forceful case for Parsifal.
»
26 Apr 2012
It is Manon month in the Mid-Atlantic states. In New York, the Met is presenting Massanet’s take, while Opera Company of Philadelphia has just opened Puccini’s version: his first successful opera, Manon Lescaut. »
26 Apr 2012
Los Angeles lieder lovers were treated to two extraordinary Schubertian
journeys on April 16th and 18th when bass-baritone Matthias Goerne partnered
with Christian Eschenbach performed the song cycles, Die schöne
Müllerin and Winterreise, as part of the Los Angeles
Philharmonic’s celebration of the composer’s 215th birthday. »
26 Apr 2012
The unfashionableness of Der Freischütz in England is a little baffling. In its day, not only was the opera celebrated across Germany, it soon conquered other European stages and indeed theatres worldwide. »
25 Apr 2012
An exciting contribution to the discography of this popular opera, the live performance of Richard Strauss’s Salome from the Festspielhaus at Baden-Baden is a compelling DVD. »
25 Apr 2012
The regiment marches onwards! »
19 Apr 2012
Lyric Opera of Chicago has begun with the current season’s production of Show Boat a series of musicals of the American theater to be featured in coming years. »
