‘The Only Path’. So reads the insignia emblazoned on the drop curtain, as the overture to Alcina strikes up in the Royal Opera House pit at the start of Richard…
Year: 2022
WNO’s La bohème at the Birmingham Hippodrome
Annabel Arden’s production of La bohème is ten years old now, but somehow I’ve contrived not to encounter it during my visits to the Birmingham Hippodrome during the last decade. …
Mortality and meaning: Welsh National Opera’s superb Makropulos Case at the Birmingham Hippodrome
Elina Makropulos, the ‘heroine’ of Leoš Janáček’s 1925 opera The Makropulos Case (Věc Makropulos), has been alive for 337 years, her longevity prolonged by an experimental potion given to her…
A masterly traversal of Duparc songs
The habit among composers of almost excessive self-criticism has been a curiously French phenomenon over the last century, typified by Dukas, Duruflé and his younger, more progressive contemporary Henri Dutilleux.…
To La Scala Picturehouse, for an intriguing triple bill at Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Nino Rota’s one-act radio opera, Il due timidi, was composed for Radio Audizioni Italiane and first broadcast in November 1950. Its first London performance took place at the Scala Theatre…
Fine collaborations between Claude Debussy & Mikko Franck
Some twenty years ago Finnish conductor Mikko Franck, then in his early 20s, was considered classical music’s Next Best Thing: his debut conducting disc with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra…
Ernani at Lyric Opera of Chicago
Giuseppe Verdi’s early masterpiece Ernani returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago in a production featuring several outstanding singers. The role of Ernani is sung by Russell Thomas, the part of…
The Rape of Lucretia at Snape Maltings
The myth of Lucretia, first told by Livy, tells of the rape of Collatinus’s eponymous wife by his fellow soldier, Tarquinius, the son of the Etruscan king who rules over…
An Anatomy of Melancholy
‘Melancholy can be overcome only by melancholy.’ One imagines that countertenor Iestyn Davies and lutenist Thomas Dunford have taken heed of the words of the English clergyman Robert Burton –…
In conversation with Mary Bevan
Operas sometimes seem like the proverbial London bus: you wait at the stop for ages and then three come along at once. This year, the bus’s destination has been Alcina’s…