CosÏ fan tutte is, primarily, an ensemble opera and it sinks or swims on the strength of its sextet of singers – and this performance very much swam. In a…
Month: February 2019
Gavin Higgins’ The Monstrous Child: an ROH world premiere
The Royal Opera House’s choice of work for the first new production in the splendidly redesigned Linbury Theatre – not unreasonably, it seems to have lost ‘Studio’ from its name…
Elektra at Lyric Opera of Chicago
From the first moments of the recent revival of Sir David McVicar’s production of Elektra by Richard Strauss at Lyric Opera of Chicago the audience is caught in the grip…
Longborough Festival Opera founders to receive Wagner Society award
The Wagner Society has announced that Longborough Festival Opera co-founders Martin and Lizzie Graham will receive its prestigious Reginald Goodall Award, which recognises individuals who have been of outstanding service…
Six Charlotte Mew Settings: in conversation with composer Kate Whitley
Though she won praise from the literary greats of her day, including Thomas Hardy, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound and Siegfried Sassoon, the Victorian poet Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was little-known among…
Expressive Monteverdi from Les Talens Lyriques at Wigmore Hall
This was an engaging concert of madrigals and dramatic pieces from (largely) Claudio Monteverdi’s Venetian years, a time during which his quest to find the ‘natural way of imitation’ –…
“It Lives!”: Mark Grey ‘re-animates’ Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
“It lives!” So cries Victor Frankenstein in Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption: or the Fate of Frankenstein on beholding the animation of his creature for the ?rst time. Peake might equally…
Bampton Classical Opera Young Singers’ Competition 2019
Applications will open on March 1, 2019 for Bampton Classical Opera’s fourth biennial Young Singers’ Competition. The competition was launched in 2013 to celebrate the company’s 20th birthday. It is…
Petrenko Directs Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis
The quick rise to prominence and thin catalog of recordings by Russian conductor Kirill Petrenko, outgoing General Music Director of the Bayerische Staatsoper and incoming chief conductor of the Berlin…
Handel Singing Competition semi-finalists announced
The Handel Singing Competition has announced its 13 semi-finalists who will be competing in the 2019 Competition. The semi-final is due to take place on 5 March at Grosvenor Chapel,…