“I’d go out into the garden early in the morning, just as the sun was rising, I’d fall to my knees and pray and weep, and I wouldn’t know what…
Category: Reviews
A new La clemenza di Tito from Richard Jones at the ROH
Over fifteen months since I had last set foot in an opera house—for Carmen at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden—it felt extraordinary to be back. All else would be secondary.…
Music fit for an Emperor: Bampton Classical Opera at St John’s Smith Square
It’s a brave company that celebrates the return of live performance with an opera titled La corona, but ambitious, innovative and imaginative describe Bampton Classical Opera perfectly, and it was…
Handelian Pyrotechnics from William Towers
‘Pyrotechnics’, noun (plural): a public show of fireworks; a show of great skill, especially by a musician or someone giving a speech. William Towers’ recent recording of Handel arias, with…
Wagnerians Live in Concert
So, after months of serving as the immensely professional, amiable and modest host of the Metropolitan Opera’s Met Stars Live in Concert series, soprano Christine Goerke finally got her own…
Hérold’s Le pré aux clercs (1832), a Missing Link between Rossini and Offenbach, Done to Perfection
Good rule of thumb: if one or two arias from a forgotten opera have continued to be performed and recorded, and the overture as well, then the whole work is…
Gounod’s Early Mastery in Opera and Sacred Music: World-premiere recordings of scenes and choral works
This is the sixth volume in the “Prix de Rome” series of CD sets produced by the admirable Center for French Romantic Music, a research organization located in the Palazzetto…
Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle, impressively shaped by Susanna Mälkki
According to Oscar Wilde’s 1891 essay The Decay of Lying, ‘Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life’. While this is not the occasion to argue with that proposition,…
A Soldier’s Tale for our time: a captivating new film from the Hallé
One bright morning in mid-February 1919, a crowd of a million people gathered in New York to welcome home the 15th Infantry Regiment of New York’s National Guard, who had…
A magical marriage of Occident and Orient: Fleur Barron at Leeds Lieder
‘Dreams, Homeland and Childhood’ was an apt title for Fleur Barron’s Leeds Lieder Festival recital with pianist Joseph Middleton. Born in Northern Ireland, to a British father and Singaporean mother,…