This year’s Jette Parker Young Artists Summer Performance offered a veritable operatic smˆrgÂsbord, presenting sizable excerpts from operas ranging from Gluck to Saint-SaÎns, from Mozart to Debussy, by way of some Italian masterpieces, courtesy of Rossini and Verdi.
Category: Reviews
Cilea’s L’arlesiana at Opera Holland Park
In a rank order of suicidal depressives, Federico – the ProvenÁal peasant besotted with ‘the woman from Arles’, L’arlesiana, who yearns to break free from his mother’s claustrophobic grasp, who seeks solace from betrayal and disillusionment in the arms of a patient childhood sweetheart, but who is ultimately broken by deluded dreams and unrequited passion – would surely give many a Thomas Hardy protagonist a run for their money.
Prom 1: Karina Canellakis makes history on the opening night of the Proms 2019
The young American conductor Karina Canellakis made history as the first woman to conduct the First Night of the Proms last night (19 July 2019) as she conducted the BBC Singers, BBC Symphony Chorus and BBC Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall with soloists Asmik Grigorian (soprano), Jennifer Johnston (mezzo-soprano), Ladislav Elgr (tenor), Jan MartinÌk (bass) and Peter Holder (organ) in Zosha Di Castri’s Long is the Journey, Short Is the Memory (the world premiere of a BBC commission), Antonin Dvo?·k’s The Golden Spinning Wheel and Leoö Jan·?ek’s Glagolitic Mass.
Barbe & Doucet’s new production of Die Zauberflˆte at Glyndebourne
No one would pretend that Emanuel Schikaneder’s libretto for Mozart’s Die Zauberflˆte would go down well with the #MeToo generation. Or with first, second or third wave feminists for that matter.
Pavarotti: A Film by Ron Howard
Ron Howard’s latest music documentary after The Beatles: Eight Days a Week and Made in America is a poignant tribute that allows viewers into key moments of Pavarotti’s career – but lacks a deeper, more well-rounded view of the artist.
Three Chamber Operas at the Aix Festival
Along with the celestial Mozart Requiem, a doomed Tosca and a gloriously witty Mahagonny the Aix Festival’s new artistic director Pierre Audi regaled us with three chamber operas — the premiere of a brilliant Les Mille Endormis, the technically playful Blank Out (on a turgid subject), and a heavy-duty Jakob Lenz.
Herbert Howells: Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
The Choir of King’s College, Cambridge has played a role in the evolution of British music. This recording honours this heritage and Stephen Cleobury’s contribution in particular by focusing on Herbert Howells, who transformed the British liturgical repertoire in the 20th century.
Laurent Pelly’s production of La Fille du rÈgiment returns to Covent Garden
French soprano Sabine Devieilhe seems to find feisty adolescence a neat fit. I first encountered her when she assumed the role of a pill-popping nightclubbing ‘Beauty’ – raced from ecstasy-induced wonder to emergency ward – when I reviewed the DVD of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production of Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno at Aix-en-Provence in 2016.
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in Aix
Make no mistake, this is about you! Jim laid-out dead on the stage floor, conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen brought his very loud orchestra (London’s Philharmonia) to an abrupt halt. Black out. The maestro then turned his spotlighted face to confront us and he held his stare. There was no mistake, the music was about us.
Mozart’s Travels: Classical Opera and The Mozartists at Wigmore Hall
There was a full house at Wigmore Hall for Classical Opera’s/The Mozartists’ final concert of the 2018-19 season: a musical paysage which chartered, largely chronologically, Mozart’s youthful travels from London to The Hague, on to Paris, then Rome, concluding – following stop-overs in European cultural cities such as Munich and Vienna – with an arrival at his final destination, Prague.