The Aix Festival was founded 75 summers ago as an altar to the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (in French it is pronounced Mose-art). This year Cosi is up again…
Month: July 2023
Kenneth Leighton: Every Living Creature – a revelatory and truly rewarding disc by Londinium
At the opening of Kenneth Leighton’s Symphony No.3 ‘Laudes musicae’ (1984), the tenor soloist sings the composer’s own hymn of praise: “O yes, I must sing! And so must you…
The choral music of Ivo Antognini is superbly sung by the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge
On this disc of a cappella choral music by the Swiss-born Ivo Antognini (born 1962), issued earlier this year by Hyperion, the Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge yet again demonstrate…
Le Prophète and Picture a Day Like This at the Aix Festival
Giacomo Meyerbeer was born near Berlin as Jacob Beer. Early in his professional life he joined his maternal grandfather’s given name, Meyer, to his father’s family name, taking on the…
An enlarged, multi-layered Carmen by Oper im Steinbruch intrigues and frustrates
Oper im Steinbruch (Opera in the Quarry) presents an annual spectacular outdoor opera production in the historic St. Margarethen quarry near Eisenstadt in Austria. In 2019, the opera was Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and after a…
Martinů’s The Greek Passion (1954-57): as relevant as ever
In 1954-57 Bohuslav Martinů composed The Greek Passion, an opera about Greek refugees seeking a bit of land in a nearby (likewise Greek) village where they might work and live,…
Stirring performances at the First Night of the BBC Proms
This season opener brought together something new, rare and familiar – and with it, in the first half, a clear plea for freedom explicit in the choice of music by…
Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival 2023
From a sonic walk to a football-inspired opera, works based on ancient classics to murder mysteries, Tête à Tête continues to hold a safe space for artists to boldly tell…
Ballets Russes at the Aix Festival
Not to be confused with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes or Wassily de Basil’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, it was Igor Stravinsky’s trilogy of ballet scores created for Paris based,…
A magnificent Philip II rescues Covent Garden’s revival of Don Carlo
Irrespective of the version of Don Carlo used, or the language in which it is sung, this is an uneven opera. The Verdi of the first two acts is, in…