Performances of varying quality, but much to enjoy in a couple of premieres and some exhilarating Ravel. Music of solace and sensuality formed the twin peaks of this all-French programme…
Author: David Truslove
PROM 50: A curate’s egg of an evening but a magnificent Glagolitic Mass
For the second of two consecutive appearances at the Albert Hall, Jakub Hrůša and his Prague-based orchestra delivered an all-Czech programme showcasing a Proms premiere, a seldom-heard piano concerto and…
The Turn of the Screw – a triumph for Waterperry Opera Festival
No better choice could have been conceived for Waterperry Opera’s first foray into a full-length Britten opera than The Turn of the Screw. And no better performance space for its…
PROM 23: Bravura performance of Busoni’s Piano Concerto from Benjamin Grosvenor
Those new to Ferruccio Busoni’s Piano Concerto might have wondered about his quasi-symphonic concept, a work of Mahlerian proportions that Benjamin Grosvenor considers to be a “kind of operatic symphony,…
PROM 19: Marking 150 years since Holst’s birth, The Cloud Messenger receives its Proms premiere
With an all-British programme bookended by Eastern influences, variously Buddhist and Sanskrit, this was one of those concerts that looked interesting on paper. The curiosity quota was high, but the…
Under the Greenwood Tree: an impressive operatic debut from Paul Carr and Dorset Opera
How we respond to Paul Carr’s operatic makeover of Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greenwood Tree will depend on how much we consider the author’s 1872 publication to be an examination…
A finely sung and staged Rake’s Progress from The Grange Festival
Based on Hogarth’s 18th-century morality tale in eight paintings and with a pithy libretto by WH Auden and Chester Kallman, Stravinsky’s operatic farewell to neo-classicism charts Tom Rakewell’s ironic “progress”…
Puccini’s flawed Edgar from Opera Holland Park
A “blunder” was the verdict from Puccini’s biographer Mosco Carner in relation to the composer’s rarely performed second opera. Much has been voiced about the shortcomings of Edgar, Puccini himself…
Maximum emotional impact concludes a magnificent Ring cycle from Longborough
Longborough’s last two segments of Der Ring des Nibelungen outline the rise and fall of Siegfried, the demise of the Gods and the eventual return of the Ring to the…
Sofia Kirwan-Baez & Longborough Festival Opera
David Truslove talks to the young, up-and-coming soprano Sofia Kirwan-Baez – one of ten Emerging Artists to appear in Longborough Festival Opera’s new production of La bohème which runs from…