Netia Jones’s new staging of Britten and Pears’s take on Shakespeare’s play creates plenty of mystery, though not necessarily the kind that’s easy to appreciate. Her single monochrome set intrigues…
Month: June 2024
Welsh National Opera’s Outstanding Il trittico
Within the last year or so Welsh National Opera has produced some remarkable productions including two unforgettable stagings of Candide and Death in Venice. Now, Puccini’s Il trittico has begun…
Intellectually serious but searing take on Monteverdi’s masterpiece
Having presented Handel’s Agrippina in 2018 – wittily reinterpreting Nero’s accession to power as the Grange Festival’s assumption of the role of company in residence at the Grange, Northington, after the…
A trenchant production of Tosca which moves its Roman setting into a more recent era of Italian history
Alongside a production of Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea, the Grange Festival present another opera set in Rome against the backdrop of the tyrannical exercise of power, albeit nearly two…
Heart-rending Kátya Kabanová from Grange Park Opera
Guilt, shame and suicide are not everyone’s cup of tea when it comes to country house opera. And if Janáček’s angst-ridden masterpiece is not the obvious stimulant you’re hoping for,…
La Vestale in Paris
Though composed in 1805 Gaspare Spontini’s La Vestale reached the Paris Opera stage finally in 1807, and then only because Empress Josephine intervened. The empress would not have been amused just now…
Partenope in San Francisco
Unlike many of the recycled productions at San Francisco Opera, Christopher Alden’s famed 2008 production of Handel’s comedy Partenope, just now on the War Memorial stage, has lost none of…
Glamour & Gaiety in Glyndebourne’s freshly minted Merry Widow
Seen for the first time at Glyndebourne, this Merry Widow is a stylish romp that, in the hands of director Cal McCrystal, recalls the best of Broadway. Glamorous sets and…
Erwartung in San Francisco
In recent years the San Francisco Symphony has indulged itself with a staged event in June. This year, with a tightened budget, it was a brief evening made of Schönberg’s…
Michieletto’s “Camping Così” returns to the New National Theatre Tokyo
Damiano Michieletto’s 2011 production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, making a welcome return to the New National Theatre, Tokyo, was seen on June 1. Set in a contemporary campground, vividly…