Many Puccini cognoscenti will speak of La fanciulla del West as Puccini’s finest opera – or at least his most musically interesting. In the latter case, I think I can…
Month: July 2019
Rossini’s La Cenerentola at West Green House Opera
The enchanting grounds of West Green House in the heart of rural Hampshire offer the ideal venue for Rossini’s fairy-tale-based opera, La Cenerentola. Glass side panels bring the 400-seater auditorium’s…
Proms at … Cadogan Hall (2): A Barbara Strozzi celebration
This lunchtime Prom at Cadogan Hall celebrated the 400th anniversary of the Venetian singer, composer and poet, Barbara Strozzi, but it might equally have been announced as a tribute to…
Sublime Bohemians Captivate Indianola
Des Moines Metro Opera closed their wholly winning 47th festival season with a wondrously sung, theatrical vivid, and emotionally bewitching treatment of Puccini’s evergreen masterpiece, La bohËme.
Des Moines: Best of All Possible Candide’s?
The version of Bernstein’s and (too-many-collaborators-to-mention) Candide that inhabited the Des Moines Metro Opera festival had a great deal to recommend it.
Profoundly Bone-chilling Wozzeck
If any further proof were needed that Des Moines Metro Opera is at the forefront of operatic excellence in America, their theatrically searing, musically impeccable Wozzeck would cement this assertion.
Des Moines Cooks Up a Novel Treat
Des Moines Metro Opera delights in coming up with site-specific operatic presentations, and Bon Appetit was triumphantly produced in the handsome hall of the Iowa Culinary Institute.
The VOCES8 Foundation is launched at St Anne & St Agnes
Where might you hear medieval monophony by the late 12th-century French composer PÈrotin, Renaissance polyphony by William Byrd, a vocal arrangement of the stirring theme from Sibelius’s tone poem Finlandia,…
A stirring War and Peace by WNO at Covent Garden
In an essay published in 1868, Tolstoy wrote: ‘What is War and Peace? It is not a novel, still less a poem, still less a historical chronicle. War and Peace…
Glyndebourne Announces the Return of the Glyndebourne Opera Cup in 2020
Glyndebourne’s major new international singing competition returns in 2020 with a renewed commitment to supporting diversity in opera. The Glyndebourne Opera Cup – the international competition for opera singers is…