Good to see such a full hall for these two beloved singers with one of the finest collaborative pianists of them all. This programme was a celebration of the lives…
Month: March 2022
Stream of Tears (Iberian roots): The Sixteen at Wigmore Hall
Marian devotion in the New World was the focus of this concert by The Sixteen at Wigmore Hall. Perhaps it was coincidental that it happened to be Mother’s Day in…
“Family Secrets” in Lyon (Trauernacht)
Some years ago British stage director Katie Mitchell, with French early music conductor Raphaël Pichon concocted a dramatic action based on fragments of cantatas by J.S. Bach for the Aix Festival. Here it was again, in Lyon’s historic, spoken word Théâtre des Célestins (above photo).
The Royal Academy of Music celebrates 200 years with a triple bill and a new opera
Commissioning a new opera for its 200th anniversary, and then staging and performing it with such excellence, are laudable things for the Royal Academy of Music to have done. If…
St John Passion: devotion and drama from Mark Padmore and the OAE
J.S. Bach’s two settings of the Passion of Christ are soaring manifestations of early modern Lutheran devotion, profound meditations on suffering (from the Latin verb, patior, meaning ‘to suffer, bear…
A Quiet Place at the Palais Garnier
A Quiet Place has come of age, thirty-nine years later. In 1983 much of its subject matter was sensitive, even taboo. As well it dwelt on naked emotional histories that…
“Family Secrets”* in Lyon (Irrelohe)
Irrelohe. An orchestral orgy — triple winds, quadruple brass though six horns, two harps, organ, celeste, guitar, mandolins, an eighth player percussion battery plus tympani and strings. Libretto and music…
“Family Secrets”* at the Opéra de Lyon (Rigoletto)
Rigoletto. Docudrama of a father whose wife dies in childbirth, raises daughter who falls in love with a selfish, debauched hoodlum. Show curtain is block apartment lighted windows. And they…
Royal Opera House announces special fundraising concerts and stream for Ukraine
Today, the Royal Opera House unveils a series of fundraising initiatives in support of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. On Good Friday 15 April 2022, at 4.30pm, Ukrainian Oksana Lyniv joins Music Director of The…
Louise Alder and Joseph Middleton at Wigmore Hall
Louise Alder’s lunchtime recital at Wigmore Hall, with pianist Joseph Middleton, was almost operatic in its scope and emotional energy. And, Alder showed her fearlessness by opening her programme with…