No matter how or where Carmen is produced, or by whom directed, costumed and performed, its promise of free wheeling sex and exciting rhythmic music, has made it one of the most popular operas in the world.
Month: October 2013
L’Arpeggiata: Mediterraneo
What do you get if you cross the sultry folk melodies of Greece, Spain and Italy with the formal repetitions of Baroque instrumental structures, and add a dash of the shady timbres and rhythmic litheness of jazz?
Toby Spence, Wigmore Hall
‘All Life death does end and each day dies with sleep.’ The sentiments of the closing lines of Gerald Manley Hopkins’ sonnet, ‘No worst, there is none.
Benjamin Britten: War Requiem
Britten’s War Requiem is one of the defining artistic works of
the twentieth century. Consummate artwork, religious ritual and prayer,
ceremonial commemoration, ideological political statement, public expression of
mourning, and private avowal of faith,
The Coronation of Poppea, ETO
James Conway’s production of Monteverdi’s final masterpiece, L’incoronazione di Poppea was
Eugene Onegin disappoints
The company’s new production of the Tchaikovsky masterpiece is cramped and
cheap, leaving the listener longing for a return of the 1997 version
Falstaff in San Francisco
A rambunctious ensemble on the stage and in the pit. A star conductor. Falstaff showed its stuff as one of the repertory’s greatest masterpieces.
Verdi’s Macbeth in Concert at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Performances of Verdi’s Macbeth take shape and leave an overall impression from both individual and collective emphases.
Robert Schumann: A Life in Song
Miah Persson and Florian Boesch sang Schumann with Malcolm Martineau at the Wigmore Hall for the latest of his Songlives series.
Roberto Devereux, WNO
For the final instalment of Welsh National Opera’s Tudor trilogy, Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, director