The rich, vivid score, and dramatic – even sensational and violent – scenario of Puccini’s last opera (not quite complete at his death exactly one hundred years ago, in 1924)…
Author: Curtis Rogers
La Fenice’s double bill of short operas by father-in-law and son-in-law
By happy coincidence 2024 is an anniversary year for both Arnold Schoenberg (born 1874) and his son-in-law Luigi Nono (born 1924). Judging from the lack of works by either composer…
Pergolesi’s L’Olimpiade is wittily and slickly recreated by Vache Baroque
As with so many librettos by Pietro Metastasio, L’Olimpiade was set numerous times during the 18th century. Like Vivaldi’s version (which audiences in London have also had the chance to…
The Puccini Festival at Torre del Lago springs a surprise in the composer’s final opera with its homage to the premiere’s abrupt conclusion
2024 is the centenary anniversary of Puccini’s death, and so it makes sense that the prominent festival of the composer’s operas at Torre del Lago (the Tuscan lakeside resort where…
Longborough Festival’s La bohème doesn’t fail to tug at the heartstrings
Good summer weather outside may have coincided with this run of La bohème, but Sarah Fahie’s production reminds us that Acts One and Two are set at Christmas Eve, with…
Nikolaus Lehnhoff strips back action and ideas to create a calm dream-like state for Tristan und Isolde
‘A monument to this most beautiful of all dreams’ is how Wagner described the intoxicating contemplation of love that is his Tristan und Isolde, and it is essentially as a…
A Barber of Seville that combines Italian and Spanish elements in the quintessentially English gardens at West Green
The theatre at West Green already has the house as the background beyond the lawn at its open back. Victoria Newlyn’s production of The Barber of Seville, therefore, simply reduces…
PROM 7: Orliński serves up a tasty late-night supper of little-known Italian delicacies
For the first late night Prom of the 2024 season, Jakub Józef Orliński gave this intimate recital of 17th century Italian vocal and operatic music, which would have been sung…
A cheerful and entertaining performance of Verdi’s late comedy amidst the sylvan magic of West Green
The opera at West Green is back in the ‘green theatre’, rather than open air on the lake, but opened up at the back so that the house itself forms…
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…