Vocal qualities matter enormously. Not just when it comes to the process of casting in the opera house, but when radically different items are programmed together in concert. I have…
Author: Alexander Hall
A Musically Triumphant New The Barber of Seville in Hamburg
How far are you prepared to go if you really, really want something? Would you stop at nothing, save perhaps murder? When it’s a question of naked political power, all…
Unanswered Questions: Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia for Hampstead Garden Opera
What price constancy in a society where fidelity is not much prized? Like its immediate predecessor, Peter Grimes, Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia has corruption at its core and a…
It Doesn’t Always Have to be Cav and Pag: A Bartók and Zemlinsky Double Bill Plus a Song Cycle in Hamburg
How long does an opera need to be? How long is a piece of string? On being asked for his favourite opera Sir Thomas Beecham instantly replied, La Bohème. Why…
Two Easter Messages from Jordi Savall in Hamburg
The Christian calendar regards Easter as its acme, for the message is all about the Resurrection. Though it is a movable feast and therefore not linked to a particular date,…
Nine is the Number of the Game: Tan Dun Conducts the London Philharmonic
Napoleon Bonaparte is reputed to have once said: “China is a sleeping giant, when she wakes she will shake the world”. It occurred to me while listening to the Chinese-American…
Le Familier et le Moins Familier with Marianne Crebassa
Originally announced as a programme of works by thirteen different composers detailing the journey of a woman’s love throughout her lifetime, and tailor-made for Elsa Dreisig, the content of this…
I Feel the Air of Another Planet: Barbara Hannigan and the Belcea Quartet
Listen to Beethoven’s Second Symphony and you would be hard put to make a connection with the composer’s inner turmoil and his realisation that the increasing signs of incurable deafness…
Blood and Gore in Hamburg: Richard Strauss’s Elektra
Do you want screams, blood-curdling cries, the unearthing of a buried axe, twisted minds messing with your own head? Richard Strauss gives it to you all in his Elektra. Those…
What Rome Wants, Rome Gets: Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto in Hamburg
In the grand scheme of things, Julius Caesar and Cleopatra weren’t the most erotic or passionate of all lovers in history, nor does their story of alignment stand out as…