Sopranos Elise Brancheau and Shannon Jones, along with pianists Martin
Néron and Keith Chambers, presented a thrilling evening of
French-themed music in an evening entitled: “Salut à la
France,” at the South Oxford Space in Brooklyn this past Saturday,
July 14th.
Month: July 2018
Thought-Provoking Concert in Honor of Bastille Day
Dido in Deptford: Blackheath Halls Community Opera
Polly Graham’s vision of Dido and Aeneas is earthy, vigorous and gritty. The artistic director of Longborough Festival Opera has overseen a production which brings together professional soloists, students from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, and a cast of more than 80 south-east London adults and children for this, the 12th, annual Blackheath Halls Community Opera.
Summer madness and madcap high jinxs from the Jette Parker Young Artists
The operatic extracts which comprised this year’s Jette Parker Young Artists Summer Performance seemed to be joined by a connecting thread – madness: whether that was the mischievousness of Zerbinetta’s comedy troupe, the insanity of Tom Rakewell, the metaphysical distress of Hamlet, or the mayhem prompted by Isabella’s arrival at Mustaf‡’s Ottoman palace, the ‘insanity’ was equally compelling.
Mefistofele at Orange’s ChorÈgies
This is the one where a very personable devil tells God that mankind is so far gone it isn’t worth his time to bother corrupting it further.
Mascagni’s Isabeau rides again at Investec Opera Holland Park
There seemed to me to be something distinctly Chaucerian about Martin Lloyd-Evans’ new production of Mascagni’s Isabeau (the first UK production of the opera) for Investec Opera Holland Park.
The 2018 BBC Proms opens in flamboyant fashion
Anniversaries and commemorations will, as usual, feature significantly during the 2018 BBC Proms, with the works of Leonard Bernstein, Claude Debussy and Lili Boulanger all prominently programmed during the season’s myriad orchestral, vocal and chamber concerts.
Banff’s Hell of an OrphÈe+
Against the Grain Theatre brought its award winning adaptation of Gluck’s opera to the Banff Festival billed as “an electronic baroque burlesque descent into hell.”
A Choral Trilogy at the Aix Festival
What Seven Stones (the amazing accentus / axe 21), and Dido and Aeneas (the splendid Ensemble Pygmalion) and Orfeo & Majnun (the ensemble [too many to count] of eleven local amateur choruses) share, and virtually nothing else, is spectacular use of chorus.
Vintage Audi — Parsifal, Kaufmann, Pape
From the Bayerisches Staatsoper Munich, Wagner Parsifal with a dream cast – RenÈ Pape, Jonas Kaufmann and Nina Stemme, Christian Gerhaher and Wolfgang Koch, conducted by Kirill Petrenko, directed by Pierre Audi. The production is vintage Audi – stylized, austere, but solidly thought-through.
Flight Soars High in Des Moines
Jonathan Dove’s innovative opera Flight is being lavished with an absolutely riveting new production at Des Moines Metro Opera’s resoundingly successful 2018 Festival.