When Tchaikovsky’s card-game opera first appeared at London’s Drury Lane Theatre in 1915, it was announced by The Times as ‘a romance’. That’s marketing for you and pushing things a…
Author: David Truslove
An impressive season-opener from Opera Holland Park’s Flying Dutchman
It seems entirely appropriate that Holland Park Opera’s first venture into Richard Wagner should be Der fliegende Holländer. And where better in London to experience its storm-tossed drama within an…
Glyndebourne’s musically gripping Parsifal
Directors have a habit of interfering with composers’ intentions in their efforts to draw out new perspectives. That’s no bad thing when a novel approach creates insightful correspondences with the…
A choral and orchestral extravaganza from The Lighthouse, Poole
Hats off to David Hill for overseeing the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s last hurrah of the season with three career-defining works that changed the musical landscape in both Britain and the…
Samantha Clarke returns to The Grange Festival next month as Violetta Valéry in a new production of Verdi’s La traviata.
David Truslove talks to Samantha about her developing career DT I believe you describe yourself as Australian/British. Where were you born and where do you consider home? SC My parents…
Nouvelle production d’Il Trittico à l’Opéra Bastille, Paris
There are certain stagings when good fortune shines on casting decisions and produces an operatic miracle. Such is the case with this new production of Puccini’s Il Trittico given at…
Some standout performances put a shine on this intermittently engaging Die Walküre
This second instalment of Barry Kosky’s Ring Cycle develops the fractured relationships partially glimpsed in Das Rheingold unveiled at the Royal Opera House 18 months ago. With his new staging…
Sparkling performances from Hurn Court Opera’s La Cenerentola
Bitter-sweet comedy of manners, happy-ever-after romance, or a serious moral tale, Rossini’s 1817 stage work is open to various interpretative slants, some even sinisterly dark. But, however you pigeon-hole this…
Searingly powerful Peter Grimes from Welsh National Opera
With vivid memories of WNO’s outstanding Death in Venice last season, expectations ran high for this new production of Benjamin Britten’s operatic masterpiece. We were not disappointed, and largely the…
Superlative Performances from Vache Baroque at Magdalen College, Oxford
As part of the Music in Oxford series, the award-winning music ensemble Vache Baroque produced an artfully conceived programme built around Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis letter of 1897, written during…