Year: 2011

The front leg of the grand piano may rest at a rather precarious angle, and
the out-sized martini glass lean a trifle askew, but Jonathan Miller’s
1986 production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado wears its
twenty-five years lightly — as do Stefanos Lazaridis’
eye-wateringly white, gleaming sets.

Relaxed, confident and composed, baritone Roderick Williams, accompanied by
pianist Helmut Deutsch, gave a polished and performance before a warmly
appreciative Wigmore Hall audience, performing an interesting selection of
songs by Wolf, Korngold, Mahler and Schumann.

Little is known about the extent to which Mozart and Da Ponte collaborated on the libretto for CosÏ fan tutte.

Neither the music nor the libretto of Charles Gounod’s RomÈo et
Juliette is quite compelling enough to have made it a popular standard.

Gluck’s operas are part of a continuum, a tradition of French vocal
declamation (as opposed to the Italian school of flights of elegant,
open-throated vocal fantasy) that can be traced to him from Lully and Rameau,
and then from Gluck through certain works of Mozart and Gluck’s pupil,
Salieri to the operas of Spontini, Berlioz and Wagner.