Year: 2014
Xerxes, ENO
Nicholas Hytner’s production of Handel’s Xerxes (Serse) at English National Opera (ENO) is nearly 30 years old, and is the oldest production in ENO’s stable.
San Diego Opera Opens 2014-2015 Season
On Friday evening September 5, 2014, tenor Stephen Costello and soprano Ailyn PÈrez gave a recital to open the San Diego Opera season. After all the threats to close the company down, it was a great joy to great San Diego Opera in its new vibrant, if slightly slimmed down form.
Otello at ENO
English National Opera’s 2014-15 season kicked off with an ear-piercing orchestral thunderbolt. Brilliant lightning spears sliced through the thick black night, fitfully illuminating the Mediterranean garret-town square where an expectant crowd gather to welcome home their conquering hero.
Anna Nicole, back with a bang!
It is now three and a half years since Anna Nicole was unleashed on the world at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
Norma in San Francisco
It was a Druid orgy that overtook the War Memorial. Magnificent singing, revelatory conducting, off-the-wall staging (a compliment, sort of).
Joyce DiDonato starts Wigmore Hall new season
There was a quasi-party atmosphere at the Wigmore Hall on Monday evening, when Joyce DiDonato and Antonio Pappano reprised the recital that had kicked off the Hall’s 2014-15 season with reported panache and vim two nights previously. It was standing room only, and although this was a repeat performance there certainly was no lack of freshness and spontaneity: both the American mezzo-soprano and her accompanist know how to communicate and entertain.
Aida at Aspendos Opera and Ballet Festival
In strict architectural terms, the stupendous 2nd century Roman
theatre of Aspendos near Antalya in southern Turkey is not an arena or
amphitheatre at all, so there are not nearly as many ghosts of gored gladiators
or dismembered Christians to disturb the contemporary feng shui as in
other ancient loci of Imperial amusement.
St Matthew Passion, Prom 66
Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra brought their staging of Bach’s St Matthew Passion to the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday, 6 September 2014.