Well, why not? Why not place this iconic statement of Italian verismo in the hands of a hyper-teutonic, avant-garde (ish) stage director, adding in a new-age Italian conductor for good…
Month: July 2024
A Colourful and Properly Immersive Take on Tippett’s Wacky Last Opera
Tippett’s last opera New Year (premiered at Houston in 1989, given at Glyndebourne the following year and apparently not staged in this country since) looks forwards and backwards as its…
Madau-Diaz’s Tosca returns to the New National Theatre Tokyo
The NNTT commemorated the centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s death with Antonello Madau-Diaz’s very popular production of Tosca under the baton of the renowned Maurizio Benini. Now enjoying its eighth revival,…
Iphigénie at the Aix Festival
Both of them — her death in Aulide and her resurrection in Tauride, back to back, in a surreal world created by Russian stage director Dimitri Tcherniakov, rendered in overdrive…
A finely sung and staged Rake’s Progress from The Grange Festival
Based on Hogarth’s 18th-century morality tale in eight paintings and with a pithy libretto by WH Auden and Chester Kallman, Stravinsky’s operatic farewell to neo-classicism charts Tom Rakewell’s ironic “progress”…
Puccini’s flawed Edgar from Opera Holland Park
A “blunder” was the verdict from Puccini’s biographer Mosco Carner in relation to the composer’s rarely performed second opera. Much has been voiced about the shortcomings of Edgar, Puccini himself…
Tosca Revived: Angel Blue, Russell Thomas and Andrea Battistoni at the Royal Opera
The Royal Opera’s venerable production of Tosca – now in its seventeenth revival – is still a great one, but after my third visit in five or so years I…
A vivid concert performance of Handel’s Orlando brings out its magical elements
In the midst of appearances at Garsington Opera as Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Iestyn Davies took the title role in one of the sorts of Baroque opera that…
Maximum emotional impact concludes a magnificent Ring cycle from Longborough
Longborough’s last two segments of Der Ring des Nibelungen outline the rise and fall of Siegfried, the demise of the Gods and the eventual return of the Ring to the…
Parts 1 and 2 of the Ring Cycle cherished at Longborough Festival Opera
Der Ring des Nibelungen is the centre piece of this year’s Longborough Festival – all four instalments of Wagner’s epic staged over three successive weeks. That the performances take place…