The Italian censors forced Giuseppe Verdi and his librettist Antonio Somma to relocate their operatic drama of the murder of the Swedish King Gustav III to Boston, demote the monarch to state governor and rename him Riccardo, and for their production of Un ballo in maschera at Grange Park Opera, director Stephen Medcalf and designer Jamie Vartan have left the ‘ruler’ in his censorial exile.
Year: 2018
Puccini’s La bohËme at The Royal Opera House
When I reviewed Covent Garden’s Tosca back in January, I came very close to suggesting that we might be entering a period of crisis in casting the great Puccini operas. Fast forward six months, and what a world of difference!
Na’ama Zisser’s Mamzer Bastard (world premiere)
Let me begin, like an undergraduate unsure quite what to say at the beginning of an essay: there were many reasons to admire the first performance of Na’ama Zisser’s opera, Mamzer Bastard, a co-commission from the Royal Opera and the Guildhall.
Les Arts Florissants : An English Garden, Barbican London
At the Barbican, London, Les Arts Florissants conducted by Paul Agnew, with soloists of Le Jardin de Voix in “An English Garden” a semi-staged programme of English baroque.
Die Walk¸re in San Francisco
The hero Siegfried in utero, Siegmund dead, Wotan humiliated, Br¸nnhilde asleep, San Francisco’s Ring ripped relentlessly into the shredded emotional lives of its gods and mortals. Conductor Donald Runnicles laid bare Richard Wagner’s score in its most heroic and in its most personal revelations, in their intimacy and in their exploding release.
Das Rheingold in San Francisco
Alberich’s ring forged, the gods moved into Valhalla, Loge’s Bic flicked, Wagner’s cumbersome nineteenth century mythology began unfolding last night here in Bayreuth-by-the-Bay.
ENO’s Acis and Galatea at Lilian Baylis House
The shepherds and nymphs are at play! It’s end-of-the-year office-party time in Elysium. The bean-bags, balloons and banners – ‘Work Hard, Play Harder’ – invite the weary workers of Mountain Media to let their hair down, and enter the ‘Groves of Delights and Crystal Fountains’.
Lohengrin at the Royal Opera House
Since returning to London in January, I have been heartened by much of what I have seen – and indeed heard – from the Royal Opera.
Stéphane Degout and Simon Lepper
Another wonderful Wigmore song recital: this time from Stéphane Degout
– recently shining in George Benjamin’s new operatic masterpiece,
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.