Who hasn’t had a childhood dream of being locked in the British Museum or Natural History Museum overnight? What would happen if the exhibits came to life? Films and fiction…
Year: 2023
Rouvali falls short: Uninspired Verdi opens the Philharmonia’s new season
The Philharmonia Orchestra is no stranger to offering Verdi’s Requiem as either a work to open a season – or to close it (or anywhere in between). Many of its…
Ian Bostridge and Les Talens Lyriques open the Echter’Classic Festival in Echternach, Luxembourg
The website of the Echternach Tourist Office tells me that this small medieval town (5,600 inhabitants) in the east of Luxembourg, nestled next to the German border, is one of…
The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs in San Francisco (finally)
Is it man pitted against machines, or is it man sacrificed to machine? Or is it mankind sacrificed to machines. Sitting in the War Memorial Opera House for Mason Bates’…
King Arthur: Early Opera Company at Temple Church
Gustav Holst condemned the entire genre of semi-opera as ‘almost insuperable’, at once ‘too dramatic for the concert platform’ and ‘too incoherent for the stage’. How, he asked, are these…
Monteverdi’s Poppea: a new production from ETO’s General Director, Robin Norton-Hale
English Touring Opera’s Autumn 2023 season opened at the Hackney Empire on Saturday 30 September 2023. This was the first season under new General Director, Robin Norton-Hale, and the opening…
Voices and Viols: Ensemble Pro Victoria and the Arculo Consort of Viols at Hatfield House
The extravagantly carved Marble Hall at Hatfield House, which is named after its black-and-white chequered floor, remains much as it was when Robert Cecil, the 1st Earl of Salisbury, built…
Ruby Hughes and friends at the Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival
The theme of this year’s Hatfield House Chamber Music Festival is ‘A Family Affair’. As Lord Salisbury and Artistic Director Guy Johnston explain in their introductions in the Festival programme,…
Medtner in England: a marvellous new release from SOMM
Composer-pianist Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951) has sometimes been labelled, like his compatriot and friend Sergei Rachmaninov, as being ‘born too late’. The late-Romantic idiom in which they both wrote, well into…
The Glass Eye: Hugh Cutting sings a new song cycle by Alex Ho at the Oxford International Song Festival
The theme of this year’s Oxford International Song Festival (previously known as Oxford Lieder) is Art:Song – Images/Words/Music. The performances, exhibitions and events will bring the visual arts, poetry and…