Category: Redbox

Billy Budd, portrayed by handsome lyric tenor Liam Bonner, is a charismatic embodiment of innocence.

This was in almost every respect an excellent performance — which therefore exacerbates the problem lying at the heart, or whatever it is that lies in its place, of the work itself.

Kasper Holten’s new production of Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera
House risks laying the house’s Director of Opera open to charges of
antiquated mores and misogyny: for he seems to suggest that the women are just
as bad, if not worse, than their seducer — and that a soulful man who seeks
genuine love is likely to find his ‘ideal beloved’ forever out of reach.

Francesco Bartolomeo Conti (1681-1732) isn’t a name that trips off opera-goers’ tongues; similarly neglected is Conti’s last opera L’Issipile, despite the fact that composer (who was also a theorbo player at the Viennese Imperial Court) was the first of several opera composers to set Metastasio’s libretto.

Tenor or baritone? Everyone will have their own individual preference about the voice type best suited to Schubert’s Winterreise — and about the manner in which the songs should be performed (narrated, or acted?).

Harry Christophers and The Sixteen brought Handel’s final oratorio, Jephtha, to the Barbican (14 January 2014) preparatory to recording the work.

Premiered in Paris in 1872, Jacques Offenbach’s Fantasio received
just ten performances before the opera was withdrawn and its composer found himself on the receiving end of bitter attacks and criticism.