“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.
Year: 2018
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?”)
Netia Jones’ new Die Zauberflˆte opens Garsington Opera’s 2018 season
“These portals, these columns prove/that wisdom, industry and art reside here.” So says Tamino, as he gazes up at the three imposing doors in the centre of Netia Jones’ replica of the 18th-century Wormsley Park House – in the grounds of which Garsington Opera’s ‘floating’ Pavilion makes its home each summer.
Feverish love at Opera Holland Park: a fine La traviata opens the 2018 season
If there were any doubts that it was soon to be curtains for Verdi’s titular, tubercular heroine then the tortured gasps of laboured, languishing breath which preceded Rodula Gaitanou’s new production of La traviata for Opera Holland Park would have swiftly served to dispel them.