Another wonderful Wigmore song recital: this time from Stéphane Degout
– recently shining in George Benjamin’s new operatic masterpiece,
Month: June 2018
Stéphane Degout and Simon Lepper
An excellent La finta semplice from Classical Opera
‘How beautiful it is to love! But even more beautiful is freedom!’ The opening lines of the libretto of Mozart’s La finta semplice are as contradictory as the unfolding tale is ridiculous. Either that master of comedy, Carlo Goldoni, was having an off-day when he penned the text – which was performed during the Carnival of 1764 in the Teatro Giustiniani di S. MoisË in Venice with music by Salvatore Perillo – or Marco Coltellini, the poeta cesareo who was entertaining the Viennese aristocracy in 1768, took unfortunate liberties with poetry and plot.
Pan-European Orpheus : Julian PrÈgardien
“Orpheus I am!” – An unusual but very well chosen collection of songs, arias and madrigals from the 17th century, featuring Julian PrÈgardien and Teatro del mondo. Devised by Andreas K¸ppers, this collection crosses boundaries demonstrating how Italian, German, French and English contemporaries responded to the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Whatever Love Is: The Prince Consort at Wigmore Hall
‘We love singing songs, telling stories …’ profess The Prince Consort on their website, and this carefully curated programme at Wigmore Hall perfectly embodied this passion, as Artistic Director and pianist Alisdair Hogarth was joined by tenor Andrew Staples (the Consort’s Creative Director), Verity Wingate (soprano) and poet Laura Mucha to reflect on ‘whatever love is’.
Bryn Terfel’s magnetic Mephisto in Amsterdam
It had been a while since Bryn Terfel sang a complete opera role in
Amsterdam. Back in 2002 his larger-than-life Doctor Dulcamara hijacked the
stage of what was then De Nederlandse Opera, now Dutch National Opera.
Laci Boldemann’s Opera Black Is White, Said the Emperor
We normally think of operas as being serious or comical. But a number of
operas-some familiar, others forgotten-are neither of these. Instead, they
are fantastical, dealing with such things as the fairy world and sorcerers,
or with the world of dreams.
A volcanic Elektra by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic
“There are no gods in heaven!” sings Elektra just before her
brother Orest kills their mother. In the Greek plays about the cursed House
of Atreus the Olympian gods command the banished Orestes to return home and
avenge his father Agamemnon’s murder at the hands of his wife
Clytemnestra. He dispatches both her and her lover Aegisthus.
A culinary coupling from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
What a treat the London Music Conservatoires serve up for opera-goers each season. After the Royal Academy’s Bizet double-bill of Le docteur Miracle and La tragÈdie de Carmen, and in advance of the Royal College’s forthcoming pairing of Huw Watkins’ new opera, In the Locked Room, based on a short story by Thomas Hardy, and The Lighthouse by Peter Maxwell Davies, the Guildhall School of Music and Drama have delivered a culinary coupling of Paul Hindemith’s The Long Christmas Dinner and Sir Lennox Berkeley’s The Dinner Engagement which the Conservatoire last presented for our delectation in November 2006.
Così fan tutte: Opera Holland Park
Absence makes the heart grow fonder; or does it? In Così fan tutte, who knows? Or rather, what could such a question even mean?
The poignancy of triviality: Garsington Opera’s Capriccio
“Wort oder Ton?” asks Richard Strauss’s final opera, Capriccio. The Countess answers with a question of her own, at the close of this self-consciously self-reflective Konversationst¸ck f¸r Musik: “Gibt es einen, der nicht trivail ist?” (“Is there any ending that isn’t trivial?”)