During the entire epidemic, Seattle Opera continued to create, primarily through videos showing it in survival mode: a monochrome, monaural reduction of Don Giovanni; Jonathan Dove’s “airport opera” Flight lip-synced…
Month: February 2022
La Valkyrie in Marseille
Omicron roared through Marseille, civil authorities refused its opera house orchestra entry into the dangerously close confines of its pit. But sitting comfortably distanced on stage itself, this under appreciated…
James Gilchrist and the Nash Ensemble at Wigmore Hall
On a day that the retiring Bishop of Liverpool described the culture of politics ‘right across the west’ as ‘adversarial, scratchy, exhausted’ and ‘rancid and dangerous’, the words of Dame…
Sounds of the Solstice: Tenebrae at Wigmore Hall
‘God made Sun and Moon to distinguish the seasons, and day, and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons.’ So preached John Donne…
Varied performances from the London Handel Players at the Wigmore Hall
Loss and celebration were the themes embedded in a programme comprising two secular cantatas from J.S. Bach’s Leipzig years, and a single aria attributed to him but now believed to…
World-Premiere Recording, under Richard Bonynge, of Alfred Cellier’s Once-Beloved 1886 Operetta Dorothy
Alfred Cellier is a largely forgotten figure today, but his Dorothy (1886), a “pastoral comedy opera in three acts,” ran for 931 performances, thanks in part to an excellent cast.…
Tosca returns to Covent Garden
Oh, what a difference a couple of months makes – Tosca returns to the Royal Opera, same production (the long-running Jonathna Kent) but with a new cast and conductor. December…
La bohème returns to ENO
This was, I think, the fourth time I have seen Jonathan Miller’s production of La bohème. It strikes me, in this revival directed by Crispin Lord, to have a good…
Tim Albery’s new production of Alcina for Opera North
Handel was rather fond of enchantresses; they pop up in his operas both early and late. It wasn’t the power per se that seems to have interested him but the…
Mesmerising performances from the LSO and Noseda at the Barbican
‘He liked to think that he wasn’t afraid of death. It was life he was afraid of, not death. He believed that people should think about death more often, and…