In George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Picture a Day like this,a Woman sets out on a quest to find a person who is genuinely happy. Having experienced the death of…
Author: Claire Seymour
David’s Alden’s Peter Grimes returns to the Coliseum
David Alden may have dragged George Crabbe’s eighteenth-century Suffolk Borough into the twentieth century, updating Britten’s Peter Grimes to the time of its composition and emphasising post-war parochialism and hypocrisy,…
Callas – Paris, 1958: celebrating Maria Callas’ centenary
To celebrate Maria Callas’ centenary, her historical performance has been fully restored for the first time in colour, exclusively for the big screen. In her centenary year Volf Productions and…
‘Grand passions and great singing’: Christof Loy’s La forza del destino returns to Covent Garden
This was an evening of big voices and grand theatrical vision. When Christof Loy’s production of Verdi’s La forza del destino was first seen at the Royal Opera House, in…
King Stakh’s Wild Hunt: ambitious, provocative, probing music theatre from Belarus Free Theatre
Belarus Free Theatre’s world premiere production at the Barbican Theatre of King Stakh’s Wild Hunt is stunning, sometimes bewildering and absolutely immersing: a sort of dramatic cross-breeding of the worlds…
At the Venice Fair: Bampton Classical Opera bring a Salieri premiere to St John’s Smith Square
Opera-in-the-garden can be rather a hit-and-miss affair, given the vagaries of an English summer. One night the sky is blue, the sun is benevolently warm, the breeze brushes gently and…
‘Celebrating Women Baroque Composers’: Roberta Invernizzi at Wigmore Hall
Early developments in print technology reveal much about women’s involvement in musical life and composition in the Renaissance and early Baroque. The earliest extant published music by a woman is…
La ciociara at Wexford Festival Opera: in conversation with conductor Francesco Cilluffo
Women & War is the theme uniting the works being performed at the 72nd Wexford Festival Opera next month. The three main productions in the Irish National Opera House each…
555: Verlaine en prison: a tender and troubled portrait of poetic profundity at the Arcola Theatre
‘The long sobs of the violins of autumn wound my heart with a monotonous languor.’ The first lines of Paul Verlaine’s ‘Chanson d’automne’ exemplify the poignant melancholy of Verlaine’s poetry…
Donizetti’s Zoraida di Granata at Wexford Festival Opera: in conversation with director Bruno Ravella
In 1822, the 24-year-old Gaetano Donizetti had his first major success when his opera Zoraida di Granata was premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. The characteristically duplicitous efforts of…