Along with the celestial Mozart Requiem, a doomed Tosca and a gloriously witty Mahagonny the Aix Festival’s new artistic director Pierre Audi regaled us with three chamber operas — the premiere of a brilliant Les Mille Endormis, the technically playful Blank Out (on a turgid subject), and a heavy-duty Jakob Lenz.
Month: July 2019
Herbert Howells: Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge has played a role in the evolution of British music. This recording honours this heritage and Stephen Cleobury’s contribution in particular by focusing on Herbert Howells, who transformed the British liturgical repertoire in the 20th century.
Laurent Pelly’s production of La Fille du rÈgiment returns to Covent Garden
French soprano Sabine Devieilhe seems to find feisty adolescence a neat fit. I first encountered her when she assumed the role of a pill-popping nightclubbing ‘Beauty’ – raced from ecstasy-induced wonder to emergency ward – when I reviewed the DVD of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production of Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno at Aix-en-Provence in 2016.
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in Aix
Make no mistake, this is about you! Jim laid-out dead on the stage floor, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen brought his very loud orchestra (London’s Philharmonia) to an abrupt halt. Black out. The maestro then turned his spotlighted face to confront us and he held his stare. There was no mistake, the music was about us.
Mozart’s Travels: Classical Opera and The Mozartists at Wigmore Hall
There was a full house at Wigmore Hall for Classical Opera’s/The Mozartists’ final concert of the 2018-19 season: a musical paysage which chartered, largely chronologically, Mozart’s youthful travels from London to The Hague, on to Paris, then Rome, concluding – following stop-overs in European cultural cities such as Munich and Vienna – with an arrival at his final destination, Prague.
Prokofiev’s Soviet Operas
https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/music/twentieth-century-and-contemporary-music/prokofievs-soviet-operas?format=HB
Tosca in Aix
From the sublime — the Mozart Requiem — to the ridiculous, namely stage director Christophe HonorÈ’s Tosca. A ridiculous waste of operatic resources.
A terrific, and terrifying, The Turn of the Screw at Garsington
One might describe Christopher Oram’s set for Louisa Muller’s new production of The Turn of the Screw at Garsington as ‘shabby chic’ … if it wasn’t so sinister.
Mozart Requiem in Aix
Pierre Audi, now the directeur gÈnÈral of the Festival d’Aix as well as the artistic director of New York City’s Park Avenue Armory opens a new era for this distinguished opera festival in the south of France with a new work by the Festival’s signature composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
A Rachmaninov Drama at Middle Temple Hall
It is Rachmaninov’s major works for orchestra – the Second and Third Piano Concertos, the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, the Symphonic Dances – alongside the All-Night Vespers and the music for solo piano, which have earned the composer a permanent place in the concert repertoire today.