Many of the ingredients for a memorable concert were there, or so they
initially seemed to be. Alas, ultimately what we learned more clearly than
anything else was that the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment’s
new Principal Artist, András Schiff, is no conductor.
Author: Gary Hoffman
‘Schiff’s Surprise’: Haydn
Lessons in Love and Violence at the Holland Festival: Impressive in parts
Six years ago composer George Benjamin and playwright Martin Crimp gave the
world Written on Skin. It caused a sensation at its unveiling at
the Aix-en-Provence Festival. Hot on the heels of its world premiere at the
Royal Opera House in London, the composer is now conducting their second
full-length opera, Lessons in Love and Violence, at the Holland
Festival, where he is this year’s Composer in Focus.
Boris Godunov in San Francisco
Yes, just when you thought Wotan was the only big guy in town San Francisco Symphony (just across a small street from San Francisco Opera), offered three staged performances of the Mussorgsky masterpiece Boris Godunov in direct competition with San Francisco Opera’s three Ring des Nibelungen cycles.
Stéphane Degout and Simon Lepper
Another wonderful Wigmore song recital: this time from Stéphane Degout
– recently shining in George Benjamin’s new operatic masterpiece,
Bryn Terfel’s magnetic Mephisto in Amsterdam
It had been a while since Bryn Terfel sang a complete opera role in
Amsterdam. Back in 2002 his larger-than-life Doctor Dulcamara hijacked the
stage of what was then De Nederlandse Opera, now Dutch National Opera.
Laci Boldemann’s Opera Black Is White, Said the Emperor
We normally think of operas as being serious or comical. But a number of
operas-some familiar, others forgotten-are neither of these. Instead, they
are fantastical, dealing with such things as the fairy world and sorcerers,
or with the world of dreams.
A volcanic Elektra by the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic
“There are no gods in heaven!” sings Elektra just before her
brother Orest kills their mother. In the Greek plays about the cursed House
of Atreus the Olympian gods command the banished Orestes to return home and
avenge his father Agamemnon’s murder at the hands of his wife
Clytemnestra. He dispatches both her and her lover Aegisthus.
Così fan tutte: Opera Holland Park
Absence makes the heart grow fonder; or does it? In Così fan tutte, who knows? Or rather, what could such a question even mean?
The Devil, Greed, War, and Simple Goodness: Ostr?il’s Jack’s Kingdom
Here is a little-known opera that, like an opera by the Swedish composer
Laci Boldemann that I have reviewed here, and like
Ravel’s amazing L’enfant et les sortilègesá, utterly bypasses the usual categories of comic and grand/tragic by
cultivating instead the rich realm of fantasy and folk tale.