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…
Year: 2023
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…
The Pilgrim’s Progress at the Three Choirs Festival
‘As regards the Cathedral – it is, to my mind essentially a stage piece & I said I wd not allow it in a hall or church till it was…
Tristan und Isolde at the Bavarian State Opera
Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Tristan, first seen two years ago, marking an end to Nikolaus Bachler’s intendancy, is on first sight at least, a puzzling affair. There are ideas, certainly, though quite…
The Faerie Bride: sensuousness and mysticism at the Three Choirs Festival
This programme by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, conducted by Martyn Brabbins, on the second evening of this year’s Three Choirs Festival presented three works that were prevailingly sombre…
A double bill of Purcell and Schoenberg in Munich
Purcell and Schoenberg: my kind of double bill. Puritan ‘authenticity’, or whatever it is calling itself at the moment, is so all-pervasive when it comes to the seventeenth century that…
Itch: a new opera by Jonathan Dove at Opera Holland Park
Simon Mayo’s book Itch was written, originally, for his science-loving son; two more books and a TV series later, Itch is now an opera by Jonathan Dove with a libretto by Alasdair Middleton based…
Wozzeck at the Aix Festival
Finally! Cancelled in 2003 by a strike, postponed in 2020 by Covid, Alban Berg’s expressionist masterpiece Wozzeck has just been given 5 performances at Aix’s Grand Théâtre de Provence —…