Rodula Gaitanou’s production of Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos debuted at Gothenburg Opera in 2018. A co-production with Opera North, the production finally made its way to Leeds, opening at…
Author: Robert Hugill
McVicar’s The Magic Flute returns to the Royal Opera House
David McVicar’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute is well on its way to its 20th anniversary (the production debuted in 2003). The current revival (seen 19 December 2022) is…
A wonderfully vivid evening: Blackheath Halls Opera in Bernstein’s Candide
Bernstein’s Candide has been through innumerable versions since the work’s disastrous premiere on Broadway in 1956, and in many ways, it remains a sequence of songs in search of a…
The Trocs go to the opera? Vinci’s Alessandro nell’Indie with five countertenors at Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival
This was a brilliantly theatrical and superbly sung recreation of an opera reflecting the work’s premiere by an all-male cast. Max Emanuel Cencic’s Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival takes place in…
Prom 7: an ‘interventionist’ Dido and Aeneas from David Bates and La Nuova Musica
We have no idea what the first performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas sounded like, we’re not even sure when it took place. All we have are possibilities, probabilities, and a few…
Hasse’s Antonio e Cleopatra at the Buxton International Festival
Like Handel before him, Johann Hasse (some 14 years Handel’s junior) left his native Germany to get some Italianate polish. His first major work was the serenata Antonio e Cleopatra,…
La donna del lago at the Buxton International Festival
Rossini’s operas for Naples, where he was music director of the Royal theatres from 1815 to 1821 represent an important strand in the development of his opera. There he had…
Opera Rara perform Mercadante’s Il proscritto at the Barbican Hall
Mercadante is the nearly man of Italian opera, with a successful career lasting from 1819 to the 1860s yet never quite achieving the level of prominence, or historical endurance, of…
Rusalka at Garsington Opera
Garsington Opera planned its production of Dvořák’s Rusalka for 2020 with Natalya Romaniw in the title role. Cancelled and re-scheduled for 2022, thankfully still with Romaniw, the production debuted last…
London Handel Festival at St John’s Smith Square
On Wednesday 14 April 2022, two London festivals came together when the London Handel Festival brought a programme of Baroque sacred music to St John’s Smith Square’s Easter Festival. Adrian…