Following its 1913 world premiere at the Teatro alla Scala, Italo Montemezzi’s L’amore dei tre re (The Love of Three Kings) immediately entered the standard repertory both in Italy and…
Year: 2023
Salome at the Staatsoper Hamburg
The recent production of Richard Strauss’s Salome at the Staatsoper Hamburg, one of Germany’s major companies, has received rapturous reviews. Its main virtue is the assumption of the title role…
The Elixir of Love in San Francisco
That’s L’elisir d’amore, Donizetti’s bel canto gem, dolled up somewhere on the Italian riviera by the same team that set San Francisco Opera’s 2012 Lohengrin in a Soviet era, bookless…
Anthony Roth Costanzo makes his debut at Wigmore Hall with La Nuova Musica
On the page this looked rather a rag-bag sort of programme. Some early Mozart opera seria arias and songs, alongside two of Gluck’s best-known arias from Orfeo ed Euridice, welded…
Musically powerful Don Giovanni from Glyndebourne
First unveiled at Glyndebourne in May (review), Paul Higgins’s revival of Don Giovanni leaves Mariame Clément’s interpretation largely untouched, yet questions about her staging and its ambiguities remain unexplained. Most…
Omar in San Francisco
The black man Omar Ibn Said was forcibly brought from sub-Saharan Africa to South Carolina in 1807. He was sold, becoming an indentured person for life (d. 1863). Omar the…
Handel’s Jephtha at the Royal Opera House
Voices cut through the darkness, chanting in prayer. A candle flickers centre-stage. These are potent symbols of the fundamentalism and fire that drive Handel’s Jephtha and of the battle between…
Francisco Guerrero from The Brabant Ensemble
Known by his contemporaries as ‘El cantor de Maria’, Francisco Guererro (1528-99) was a much-travelled musician and composer whose career bridged the gap between Cristóbal de Morales and Tomás Luis…
Annabel Arden’s L’elisir d’amore brings autumn sunshine to Glyndebourne
The first day of what would have been Glyndebourne’s 2023 Autumn Tour, had not Arts Council England swung its financial axe, was as sunny and bright as the score which…
Forget This Night: a new disc by Katharine Dain and Sam Armstrong
Lili Boulanger’s life and composing career were tragically all too brief. Born in 1893, into an eminent musical family, she was both a prodigy and a pioneer, becoming the first…