Making his debut with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists, Masaaki Suzuki directed an all-Bach concert celebrating the 300th anniversary of five works, four cantatas and a Sinfonia, written in…
Author: David Truslove
Tchaikovsky’s disturbing but gripping Mazeppa at Grange Park
Scenes of torture, execution and bleak rows of coffins may not be the cheeriest of hors d’oeuvres before your interval bubbly. This is Grange Park Opera’s new staging of Tchaikovsky’s…
Gothic horror meets Sigmund Freud in Saint-Saëns’s The Silver Bell at Winchester’s Theatre Royal
Of Camille Saint-Saëns’s thirteen operas, only Samson and Dalila remains a regular part of the repertory. So, the enterprising New Sussex Opera must be congratulated on presenting the UK premiere…
A richly imagined and musically compelling Simon Boccanegra from Grange Park Opera
The Viennese critic Edward Hanslick once compared Brahms’ Fourth Symphony to “a dark well”, and declared “the longer we look into it, the more brightly the stars shine back”. Such…
Memorable singing and vivid orchestral playing enliven Grange Festival’s Traviata
Grange Festival’s new production of Verdi’s tragedy brings magnificent singing and much superb playing from the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under Richard Farnes who makes his house debut. Director Maxine Braham,…
Emphatic singing characterises much of Garsington’s darkly imagined Queen of Spades
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…
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…