“Love, meet me in the green glen,Beside the tall elm-tree,Where the sweetbriar smells so sweet agen.” The poet-speaker’s call to his beloved to join him, at sunset, in the green…
Author: Claire Seymour
Carolyn Sampson, Tim Mead and Arcangelo explore German-Italian crosscurrents at Wigmore Hall
This concert at Wigmore Hall by Arcangelo, under their director Jonathan Cohen, explored German-Italian cultural crosscurrents in the early 18th century. So, we had a motet dating from the Italian…
Mark Padmore and Imogen Cooper at Wigmore Hall
The five concerts forming Mark Padmore’s 2022-23 residency at Wigmore Hall will be his last ‘full recitals’ at the Hall, though not necessarily his last appearances. The series focuses on…
James Gilchrist and the Nash Ensemble at Wigmore Hall
On a day that the retiring Bishop of Liverpool described the culture of politics ‘right across the west’ as ‘adversarial, scratchy, exhausted’ and ‘rancid and dangerous’, the words of Dame…
Sounds of the Solstice: Tenebrae at Wigmore Hall
‘God made Sun and Moon to distinguish the seasons, and day, and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the earth but in their seasons.’ So preached John Donne…
Bravura and brutality: Irish National Opera bring Vivaldi’s Bajazet to the Royal Opera House
In this age of copyright, the pasticcio – in which pre-existing arias by various composers are assembled to make a ‘new’ work – is a somewhat discredited form, generally regarded…
Handel’s Theodora at the Royal Opera House
Theodora is ‘coming home’ … but not as you know it, was the essential message of the press briefings issued by the Royal Opera House in the run up to…
Mirages: Roderick Williams and Roger Vignoles explore the ‘art’ of French song
The repertory of French mélodie must comprise many thousands of songs. The genre, which developed in the early 1800s and reached full maturity in the second half of the century, was…
Staging Handel’s Tamerlano: a conversation with Dionysios Kyropoulos
Tamerlane (1336-1405): Mongol conqueror, masterful military leader and tactician, murderous tyrant. The son of a nomadic shepherd Taraqai – a minor nobleman from the Barlas tribe – Tamerlane (also known…