For several seasons now, Des Moines Metro Opera has nurtured a fruitful collaboration with the Headquarters of the Iowa National Guard at Camp Dodge in a northwest part of the…
Month: July 2023
Mark Elder and the Hallé: a superlative Russian Prom of gripping power and intensity
Longevity clearly matters. I do not mean in the age of its conductors, although this sometimes is important, but by the length of time they have spent with their orchestras.…
An uplifting celebration of hybridity: Purcell’s The Fairy Queen at Longborough
‘A rubbishy old play.’ Michael Burden, editor of the Eulenberg edition of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen (the first to include the complete spoken text and music), explains that Restoration and…
DMMO’s dwb: Tackling Social Injustice
“Every time you leave, I’ll try to let go a little more. But every time, I’ll be waiting to hear your key in our front door.” – The Mother in…
Semele at Glyndebourne
“No Oratorio, but a baudy [sic] opera.” Such was the assessment of Handel’s Semele offered by Charles Jennens, the librettist of Handel’s Messiah. He was probably echoing the somewhat cold…
Uplifting performances of Orchestral Anthems from Merton College, Oxford
Christmas, Easter and specific feast days or celebrations provide opportunities for cathedrals and large parish churches with the necessary resources to perform liturgical works with orchestral accompaniment. All the music…
Massenet’s Le roi de Lahore at Dorset Opera
Despite the revival of interest in Massenet’s operas, Le roi de Lahore does not seem to have been staged in the UK since 1879. It is that still relatively unfashionable…
Astonishing Castle Among Iowa’s Cornfields
Miraculous. That pretty much encapsulates my reaction to the staggering accomplishment of Des Moines Metro Opera’s festival production of Bartok’s masterpiece, Bluebeard’s Castle. This taut, barely sixty-minute performance was brimming…
Des Moines’ Juicy Oranges Have Zesty Ap-peel
If you enjoy an occasional unapologetic, boisterous paean to shamelessly infectious comic absurdity, well, please plunk your silly ass down, right next to mine. In the case of Sergei Prokofiev…
Wine, women and song: a tremendous celebration of spring, joy and love at the Proms, from the CBSO and Kazuki Yamada
Wine, women and song. Immortalized by Johann Strauss II in his 1869 Op.333 waltz, Wein, Weib und Gesang, this was also the title that John Addington Symonds gave to his…