There’s a danger that a little-known work not previously performed in the UK may be all too quickly erased from memory when familiar works grab the listener’s attention, especially when…
Year: 2023
Joel Frederiksen and Ensemble Phoenix Munich offer the lyric mastery of Walther von der Vogelweide
In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the aesthetic and songs of courtly love travelled to Germany from Provence and northern France. Minnesinger, like their Romance counterparts, composed both the texts…
Anime Immortali: Franco Fagioli offers a portrait of Mozart and the castrato voice
Mozart probably isn’t the first composer whom one thinks of in association with eighteenth-century castrati. But, for over two decades – from Mitridate, re di Ponto K87/74a, written for the…
Opera Rara launch Donizetti Song Project at Wigmore Hall with Lawrence Brownlee & Carlo Rizzi
On Saturday 9 September, Opera Rara launch its Donizetti Song Project at Wigmore Hall with tenor Lawrence Brownlee and its Artistic Director Carlo Rizzi. Continuing its year-long celebration of Donizetti’s…
The Falling and the Rising at Camp Dodge, Iowa
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…
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…