Reviews

05 Oct 2020

ETO Autumn 2020 Season Announcement: Lyric Solitude

English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing. »

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29 Jan 2010

Lyric Opera of Chicago’s The Merry Widow

Melodic and scenic gaiety predominates in Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new production of Franz Lehár’s The Merry Widow.  »

28 Jan 2010

Simon Boccanegra, New York

The Times used to have a music critic who seemed to feel that singing, especially in costume, didn’t count as serious music, though he reviewed opera anyway.  »

25 Jan 2010

London’s Rambunctious Rake

Covent Garden has revived director Robert Lepage’s popular and well-traveled version of The Rake’s Progress with often thrilling results. »

25 Jan 2010

Dido and Aeneas by Les Arts Florissants

We all wish Henry Purcell had written a few more operas like Dido and Aeneas — simple to cast, simple to stage, offering endless possibilities for either reserved or outrageous treatment, attractive to every sort of audience.  »

22 Jan 2010

Il Mondo della Luna (The World on the Moon)

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, around 1777, the Empress Maria Theresa used to visit Prince Esterhazy’s summer palace at Esterhàza, where there was an opera house fully equipped with stage machinery, leading singers, an orchestra, and a guy named Joseph Haydn to compose on cue.  »

22 Jan 2010

Respighi — Works for solo voice and orchestra

While Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) is best known to modern audiences for his colorful programmatic works associated with Italian locations, his vocal music is also engaging.  »

19 Jan 2010

Operatic Italian

Robert Stuart Thomson’s Italian language learning text, Operatic Italian, promises to become an invaluable textbook for aspiring operatic singers, voice teachers, coaches and conductors.  »

18 Jan 2010

Stiffelio at the MET

Stiffelio was composed just after Luisa Miller — an opera that has had little trouble holding its own in the repertory — and just before the magic trio of Rigoletto, Trovatore and Traviata, the first Verdi operas to take their immediate place on the stages of the world and hold them without a break from that day to this.  »

18 Jan 2010

Phaedra at the Barbican

Most musical of mourners, weep anew! Not all to that bright station dared to climb And happier they their happiness who knew Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time »

18 Jan 2010

Elektra at the Barbican

Concert performances of operas are often problematic in that the work tends to be cut or otherwise played around with, or the venue is inappropriate - after all, these were meant to be staged pieces. »

17 Jan 2010

Carmen at the MET

Elina Garanča conceals her gleaming gold tresses beneath a curly black wig to sing Carmen.  »

17 Jan 2010

La Fille du Régiment in Montpellier

The Opéra National de Montpellier sometimes rises to artistic heights, and even when it fails its attempts are often interesting.  »

14 Jan 2010

Britten: Peter Grimes

Are you sitting comfortably?  »

08 Jan 2010

Quality opera just round the corner

Well into the 1960s, ‘provincial theaters’ were the backbone of Italy’s operatic culture.  »

07 Jan 2010

Cendrillon in Marseille

Rare repertory but not truly rare, Massenet’s Cendrillon makes an appearance from time to time.  »

29 Dec 2009

58th Wexford Festival Opera

David Agler must be feeling a trifle unlucky. Having in 2005 taken over the reins of a flourishing, internationally renowned opera festival, with a stylish new opera house in the planning and the Irish economy booming, his hopes must been high; but in the event the Canadian’s first few years as Artistic Director of the Wexford Festival Opera have been far from plain-sailing.  »

18 Dec 2009

Elektra at the Met

The roles Richard Strauss composed for his “chorus” of Five Serving Maids in Elektra — all that remains in the opera of the commentator chorus in Sophocles’ tragedy — are short but arduous. »

18 Dec 2009

Ernani: The Case for Early Verdi at Lyric Opera of Chicago

Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s early opera Ernani have become relatively infrequent primarily because of the difficulties of casting the work requiring four demanding roles.  »

18 Dec 2009

Sergei Leiferkus at Wigmore Hall

Exchanging the stage of The Royal Opera House — where he is currently performing the role of His Highness in Tchaikovsky’s fairy-tale opera, The Tsarina's Slippers —  »

18 Dec 2009

Frankfurt’s ‘Medium’ Rarities

Encountering Frankfurt Opera’s staging of Leoni’s L’Oracolo and Puccini’s Le Villi, I was reminded of that old saw about the German weather. »

18 Dec 2009

Amsterdam: Minnie, Get Your Gun

It is hard to know where to start to adequately laud Netherlands Opera’s witty new La Fanciulla del West. »

18 Dec 2009

Pénélope in Manhattan

The one thing certain about the judgment of history is that history will change its mind.  »

15 Dec 2009

Zürich’s Riveting ‘Corsaro’

Il Corsaro, the Verdi rarity currently on display at Zürich Opera, is the best of both possible worlds. »

11 Dec 2009

Puccini Romance

This disc faces a marketplace already crowded with similar compilations from major companies who can raid their archives to offer competitive interpretations at bargain prices.  »

11 Dec 2009

Emma Matthews in Monte Carlo

Emma Matthews is an English born soprano currently resident in Australia where she has sung with the state based opera companies as well as the national company Opera Australia where she is currently a soloist.  »

11 Dec 2009

Les Contes d’Hoffmann at the MET

The Tales of Hoffmann is a cruel piece, for all the wit of the macabre tales on which it is based and the sparkle the dying Offenbach put into his last and grandest score.  »

11 Dec 2009

A Streetcar Named Desire at Opera Australia

Musically, Australia looks to Britain and Europe, especially for its operatic diet and America’s considerable operatic output has been overlooked.  »

10 Dec 2009

Der Rosenkavalier - Royal Opera House, London

In dark, damp December we need good cheer, and Der Rosenkavalier at the Royal Opera House, delivers colour and spectacle. in abundance. It's a revival of the John Schlesinger production from 1884, and somewhat antiquated, but that's no disadvantage, for the passage of time haunts Der Rosenkavalier.  »

08 Dec 2009

Tchaikovsky’s Sure-Footed ‘Slippers’

Spearheaded by a stunning design concept for The Tsarina’s Slippers, London’s Covent Garden served up as delectable a production as could be desired, and introduced its lucky patrons to a jewel of an under-performed comic opera in the bargain. »

06 Dec 2009

A Faust of Distinction at Lyric Opera of Chicago

For its second production of the 2009-10 season Lyric Opera of Chicago staged a revival of Charles Gounod’s Faust, last seen here in 2003-04.  »

04 Dec 2009

Le Nozze di Figaro at the MET

The best news about the Met’s eleven-year-old Jonathan Miller production of Le Nozze di Figaro is that it has been restaged by Gregory Keller, more tautly spun, many elegant jokes or character moments inserted, several idiocies discarded and with plenty of room remaining for singers with a flair for it (such as Luca Pisaroni and Isabel Leonard) to invent comic business of their own. »

02 Dec 2009

Otello in San Francisco

Sir Peter Hall created this production of Otello at Chicago Lyric Opera in 2001.  »

01 Dec 2009

No need to rise for this Hallelujah Chorus

ENO did not exactly ‘import a choir of Heathens’ to encourage the Shaws of this world to ‘hasten’ to its version of ‘Messiah’ ‘if only to witness the delight of the public and the discomfiture of the critics,’ the contribution of ‘Heathens’ in musical terms being limited to representing the populace of an initially grey Britain (or so I assume) but for every critic who was discomfited — most of us — there were hundreds of audience members who loved it, so it’s fairly safe to predict a considerable hit. »

30 Nov 2009

Mark Padmore at Wigmore Hall

Mark Padmore and The English Concert took us on a journey from the dark depths of melancholy to the ethereal transcendence of joy, in a display of consummate artistry at the Wigmore Hall. »

27 Nov 2009

Esther at NYCO

The question that puzzled me when attending Esther was Why.  »

24 Nov 2009

Musical Exoticism: Images and Reflections

Ralph Locke’s recent book on Musical Exoticism is both an historical survey of aspects of the exotic in Western musical culture and a discussion of paradigms of the exotic and their relevance for musicological understanding.  »

24 Nov 2009

Così fan tutte, Opera Australia

Like most opera companies, the Mozart/da Ponte trifecta of Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte are central to Opera Australia’s repertoire.  »

24 Nov 2009

Iestyn Davies at Wigmore Hall

There was a certain inevitability about the build-up to Iestyn Davies’ recital at the Wigmore Hall in London last Wednesday.  »

17 Nov 2009

Lorin Maazel conducts Verdi and Puccini at La Scala

In the mid-1980s (just before the Riccardo Muti era began), Lorin Maazel often ruled the conductor's roost at La Scala.  »

17 Nov 2009

From the House of the Dead at the MET

Leoš Janáček’s From the House of the Dead is a very odd duck to find on the stage of a grand opera house.  »

15 Nov 2009

Die Rheinnixen by New Sussex Opera

London has long been spoiled in the operatic rarity department, thanks to companies like Opera Rara, Chelsea Opera Group and University College Opera populating various areas of the Venn diagram that is obscure repertoire.  »

12 Nov 2009

Hindemith’s Das Marienleben — Soile Isokoski

Hindemith’s Das Marienleben has a formidable reputation, but is rarely heard. Soile Isokoski could change all that. This cycle is a tour de force, but tours de force need singers capable of achieving them.  »

11 Nov 2009

Schubert: Fierrabras

The worlds of lieder and opera seem to share the same galaxy, while being countless light years apart.  »

11 Nov 2009

Lohengrin in Houston: A long-awaited return

Wagner was last on stage in Houston’s Wortham Theater Center in 2001, when the Houston Grand Opera staged Tannhäuser.  »

11 Nov 2009

Muti conducts Domingo in Verdi's Otello

The December opening of the La Scala season requires a notable production, and in 2001 a gorgeous new production of Verdi's Otello fit the bill.  »

10 Nov 2009

Duke Bluebeard’s Castle at ENO

This grueling production of Bartok’s operatic masterpiece, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, clearly did not set out to retain any of the ambiguity and mystery of the fairytale which inspired it.  »

09 Nov 2009

Salome in San Francisco

If Herbert von Karajan conducted Madama Butterfly and Maria Callas sang Isolde it follows that Nicola Luisotti should conduct Salome.  »

09 Nov 2009

Philip Langridge at Wigmore Hall

As an interpreter of Benjamin Britten, Philip Langridge has long been esteemed as the natural successor to Peter Pears;  »

04 Nov 2009

A View from the Bridge by Vertical Player Repertory

Unlike many contemporary composers — who too often derive their operas from full-length novels — William Bolcom (whose first opera, to be fair, was the novel-based McTeague, which I do not know) based his second,  »

04 Nov 2009

The 18th Bienal of Contemporary Brazilian Music, 2009

Rio de Janeiro, which has had a string of winning luck in recent days — not only will it host the 2014 World Cup of soccer, but also the 2016 Olympic Games — continues a laudable and venerable tradition in the arts — the Biannual Festival of Contemporary Brazilian Music, now in its 18th edition.  »