Sometimes, less really is more. Such was confirmed by this powerful and affecting concert performance at the Barbican Hall of Beethoven’s lone opera, Fidelio, by Laurence Equilbey’s Paris-based Insula orchestra…
Month: May 2022
Tormento d’amore: Italian love laments from Ian Bostridge and Cappella Neapolitana
The booklet article by the musicologist Dinko Fabris which accompanies Tormento d’amore – Ian Bostridge’s most recent recording, with Antonio Florio’s Cappella Neapolitana – is titled ‘From Venice to Naples…
Zipangu and Lonely Child: Two Claude Vivier masterpieces in magnificent performances by the London Sinfonietta
The Quebquois-born composer Claude Vivier – still largely neglected, despite many of his works having an almost fearless intensity entirely relevant for today – was the subject of a rare…
A glimpse of eternity: the LPO performs Birtwistle and Mahler
For many, the greatest English composer since Purcell and the greatest English composer of opera tout court, Harrison Birtwistle died little more than a fortnight before this concert. Even for…
The Firebird: new digital opera, co-produced with Little Angel Theatre, coming to ETO at Home
English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a new digital opera for children, The Firebird, in a co-production with Little Angel Theatre. It will premiere on ETO at Home on Wednesday 18th May, before being released to…
From the Hills of Dream: the forgotten songs of Arnold Bax
In a 1949 broadcast, Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953) declared: ‘Yeats’ poetry means more to me than all the music of the centuries.’ And, when the Irish poet and dramatist died…
More virtuosic feats from Tenebrae at Wigmore Hall
Tenebrae is one of the UK’s national treasures and like a perfectly manicured county cricket pitch barely a blade of grass is out of place. Everything in this Wigmore Hall…
Damiano Michieletto’s Don Pasquale returns to the Royal Opera House
In one sense, Donizetti’s Don Pasquale hinges on a slap. In a fit of pique, Norina lashes out at the eponymous wealthy, stubborn old man whom she’s duped, when he…
Baroque pornography in Alexis Piron’s Vasta, Reine de Bordélie
One of the more enduring pleasures of having had a classical education – at least if you still remember it – is reading the richness of its literature: from Homer…
A third volume of British song from James Gilchrist and Nathan Williamson
With this third and final instalment of their survey of 100 years of British song James Gilchrist and Nathan Williamson bring us up to the present day. Their focus is…