New from Harmonia Mundi, Matthias Goerne and Lief Ove Andsnes: Robert Schumann – Liederkreis, op 24 and Kernerlieder. Goerne and Andsnes have a partnership based on many years of working together, which makes this new release, originally recorded in late 2018, well worth hearing.
Category: Reviews
Orfeo ed Euridice in Rome
No wrecked motorcycle (director Harry Kupfer’s 1987 Berlin Orfeo), no wrecked Citroen and black hearse (David Alagna’s 2008 Montpellier OrfÈe [yes! tenorissimo Roberto Alagna was the OrfÈe]), no famed ballet company (the Joffrey Ballet) starring in L.A. Opera’s 2018 Orpheus and Eurydice).
Jack the Ripper: The Women of Whitechapel – a world premiere at English National Opera
Jack the Ripper is as luridly fascinating today as he was over a century ago, so it was no doubt sensationalist of the marketing department of English National Opera to put the Victorian serial killer’s name first and the true subject of Iain Bell’s new opera – his victims, the women of Whitechapel – as something of an after-thought. Font size matters, especially if it’s to sell tickets.
Tosca at the Met
?The 1917 Met Tosca production hung around for 50 years, bested by the 1925 San Francisco Opera production that lived to the ripe old age of 92.† The current Met production is just 2 years old but has the feel of something that can live forever.
Drama Queens and Divas at the ROH: Handel’s Berenice
A war ‘between love and politics’: so librettist Antonio Salvi summarised the conflict at the heart of Handel’s 1737 opera, Berenice. Well, we’ve had a surfeit of warring politics of late, but there’s been little love lost between opposing factions, and the laughs that director Adele Thomas and her team supply in this satirical and spicy production at the ROH’s stunningly re-designed Linbury Theatre have been in severely short supply.
Mozart’s Mass in C minor at the Royal Festival Hall
A strange concert, this, in that, although chorally conceived, it proved strongest in the performance of Schumann’s Piano Concerto: not so much a comment on the choral singing as on the conducting of Dan Ludford-Thomas.
Samson et Dalila at the Met
?It was the final performance of the premiere season of Darko Tresnjak’s production of Camille Saint-SaÎns’ Samson et Dalila. Four tenors later.†
The Enchantresse and Dido and Aeneas
in Lyon
Dido and Aeneas, Il ritorno d’Ulisse and Tchaikowsky’s L’Enchantresse, the three operas of the OpÈra de Lyon’s annual late March festival all tease destiny. But far more striking than the thematic relationship that motivates this 2019 festival is the derivation of these three productions from the world of hyper-refined theater, far flung hyper-refined theater.
The devil shares the good tunes: Chelsea Opera Group’s Mefistofele
Every man ‘who burns with a thirst for knowledge and life and with curiosity about the nature of good and evil is Faust … [everyone] who aspires to the Unknown, to the Ideal, is Faust’.
La forza del destino at Covent Garden
Prima la music, poi la parole? It’s the perennial operatic conundrum which has exercised composers from Monteverdi, to Salieri, to Strauss. But, on this occasion we were reminded that sometimes the answer is a simple one: Non, prima le voci!