In Mozart’s Operas: a critical study (1913), Edward J. Dent pronounced Lucio Silla to be ‘a frigid piece of formality’ and ‘a mediocre opera, not even as good as Mitridate’. …
Author: Claire Seymour
Sir John in Love: Vaughan Williams’ opera is presented with wit, charm and affection by British Youth Opera
Of Shakespeare’s characters, only Sir John Falstaff has inspired so many operas. Alongside accounts of his amorous adventures by Salieri, Nicolai, Balfe, Verdi and Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ four-act comedy,…
VOCES8 and the VOCES8 Scholars perform Vaughan Williams’ Mass in G in Milton Abbey
The closing concert of VOCES8’s annual summer school and festival at Milton Abbey was a contribution to this year’s commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan…
Prom 43: Handel’s Solomon
Some of Handel’s oratorios aspire to theatre; some have had theatre thrust upon them. Solomon has neither sustained drama nor a coherent narrative, but it does have some fantastic music…
A sonically stirring ‘Song of the Earth’ from Le balcon and Maxime Pascal
Performances and recordings of Rainer Riehn’s 1983 chamber-ensemble arrangement of Mahler’s symphony-cum-song-cycle, Das Lied von der Erde, seem quite common these days – perhaps even more so than the original…
Prom 41: Superb Nielsen from Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
“I think many people are in for pleasant surprises as they get to know Nielsen: his rough charm, his swing, his drive, his rhythmic surprises, his strange power of harmonic…
Colourise: a superb new disc by London Choral Sinfonia
In 1951, the English Opera Group commissioned a work from Lennox Berkeley, to be performed at the fifth Aldeburgh Festival the following year. That work, the Variations on a Hymn…
Ethel Smyth’s The Boatswain’s Mate at the Arcola Theatre
Two days, two boatswains’ mates: the first, genuine navy lad Bill Bobstay, sailing the seas aboard Captain Corcoran’s H.M.S. Pinafore; the second, ex-soldier Ned Travers, partner-in-intrigue to former boatswain Harry…
Smooth sailing on H.M.S. Pinafore at Opera Holland Park
With the ‘good ship’ Britannia heading straight towards political and economic icebergs that are all too visible, Opera Holland Park’s offer of smoothing sailing aboard H.M.S. Pinafore, with John Savournin…
Friendship in Song: An Intimate Art – the 21st Oxford Lieder Festival
Music is a profound means of forming conversations, connections and communities. From the salon to the soirée, artists and friends have gathered to share music and ideas, politics and passions. …