ENO’s 2019/20 season features seven new productions and three revivals, the greatest number of new productions for five years.
Month: April 2019
A superb Semele from the English Concert at the Barbican Hall
It’s good to aim high … but be careful what you wish for. ClichÈd idioms perhaps, but also wise words which Semele would have been wise to heed.
A performance of Vivaldi’s La Senna festeggiante by Arcangelo
In 1726 on 25 August, Jacques-Vincent Languet, Comte de Gergy, the new French ambassador to the Venetian Republic held a celebration for the name day of King Louis XV of France. There was a new piece of music performed in the loggia at the foot of Languet’s garden with an audience of diplomats and, watching from gondolas, Venetian nobles.
Matthew Rose and Tom Poster at Wigmore Hall
An interesting and thoughtfully-composed programme this, presented at Wigmore Hall by bass Matthew Rose and pianist Tom Poster, and one in which music for solo piano ensured that the diverse programme cohered.
Ekaterina Semenchuk sings Glinka and Tchaikovsky
To the Wigmore Hall for an evening of magnificently old-school vocal performance from Ekaterina Semenchuk. It was very much her evening, rather than that of her pianist, Semyon Skigin, though he had his moments, especially earlier on.
Hubert Parry’s Judith at the Royal Festival Hall
Caravaggio’s depiction (1598-99) of the climactic moment when the young, beautiful, physically weak Judith seizes the head of Holofernes by the enemy general’s hair and, flinching with distaste, cleaves the neck of the occupying Assyrian with his own sword, evokes Holofernes’ terror with visceral precision – eyes and screaming mouth are wide open – and is shockingly theatrical, the starkly lit figures embraced by blackness.
La Piet‡ in Rome
Say “La Piet‡” and you think immediately of Michelangelo’s Rome Piet‡. Just now Roman Oscar-winning film composer Nicola Piovani has asked us to contemplate two additional Piet‡’s in Rome, a mother whose son is dead by overdose, and a mother whose son starved to death.
Matthias Goerne: Schumann – Liederkreis, op 24 & Kernerlieder
New from Harmonia Mundi, Matthias Goerne and Lief Ove Andsnes: Robert Schumann – Liederkreis, op 24 and Kernerlieder. Goerne and Andsnes have a partnership based on many years of working together, which makes this new release, originally recorded in late 2018, well worth hearing.
Orfeo ed Euridice in Rome
No wrecked motorcycle (director Harry Kupfer’s 1987 Berlin Orfeo), no wrecked Citroen and black hearse (David Alagna’s 2008 Montpellier OrfÈe [yes! tenorissimo Roberto Alagna was the OrfÈe]), no famed ballet company (the Joffrey Ballet) starring in L.A. Opera’s 2018 Orpheus and Eurydice).
Transylvanian-born mezzo-soprano Eszter Balogh wins the 2019 Handel Singing Competition
Following the final on Saturday 6 April, the Handel Singing Competition announced mezzo-soprano Eszter Balogh as the 2019 winner. Alongside Eszter, the finalists were Patrick Terry (countertenor), David de Winter (tenor) and William Thomas (bass) and the final took place at St George’s, Hanover Square in London in front of a live audience.