The optimistic words of Julian of Norwich (1342-c.1417) might seem out of place in the modern world. Yet, Mother Julian, as the English anchorite and mystic came to be known,…
Month: July 2021
The Sixteen release their fourth volume of Purcell’s Welcome Songs for King Charles II
Harry Christophers and The Sixteen have now reached volume 4 in their ongoing exploration of Henry Purcell’s Welcome Songs for Charles II. Like the previous discs in the series, evolving…
A fresh look at Winter Words as ‘Summer at Snape’ continues
It may not have been possible for Snape Maltings to host the Aldeburgh Festival this year or last, but the Maltings have not been silent and the Summer at Snape…
Tristan und Isolde at the Aix Festival
Soprano Nina Stemme, tenor Stuart Skelton, bass Franz-Josef Selig and conductor Simon Rattle create a Tristan of transcendent music in a revelatory staging by Simon Stone. The London Symphony Orchestra…
Falstaff at the Aix Festival
It was inevitable. If stage director Barrie Kosky famously ravaged Wagner’s only comedy at Bayreuth, then he must do the same to Verdi’s only comedy. It happened just now in…
Dramatic darkness and vocal delights as Kasper Holten’s Don Giovanni returns to the Royal Opera House
So, after a Così that was wonderfully serene but somewhat serioso, now a Don Giovanni that impresses vocally but seems to have lost some of its giocoso. Kasper Holten’s production…
VOCES8 open Live for London Summer with a sprinkle of stardust
VOCES8’s new Live from London summer festival opened in ‘sparkling’ fashion with a characteristically mixed repertoire programme, entitled Stardust. Much was reassuringly familiar, and very welcome: the perfect blending and…
Glyndebourne’s Così fan tutte provides welcome reassurance and orderliness
When I last saw Nicholas Hytner’s 2006 Glyndebourne production of Così fan tutte – at the Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury during the 2017 autumn tour, at the time reportedly the…
Musically, a first-rate Midsummer Night’s Dream from The Grange Festival
Thank goodness for modern technology and sophisticated recording techniques, without which this production of Pears’s and Britten’s cherry-picked edit of Shakespeare’s play might have been scuppered. A month before curtain-up…