Pierre Audi, the artistic director of the Aix Festival, completed the Aix Festival’s Monteverdi cycle just now by staging, himself, this Il ritorno d’Ulisse (1640). L’Orfeo (1607) was staged by…
Category: Reviews
High infidelity – a double bill of comedy and tragedy at Opera Holland Park
‘Cav and Pag get a divorce’ is Opera Holland Park’s promotional line for its double bill, which prefaces Leoncavallo’s familiar Pagliacci with a relatively rarely seen work, Wolf-Ferrari’s Il segreto…
PROM 7: Orliński serves up a tasty late-night supper of little-known Italian delicacies
For the first late night Prom of the 2024 season, Jakub Józef Orliński gave this intimate recital of 17th century Italian vocal and operatic music, which would have been sung…
PROM 6: A striking Verdi Requiem of blazing force and compelling drama
With this performance, the first given at the Proms since 2021, and twenty-second since its first outing in 1956, Verdi’s Requiem is now the most frequently performed non-operatic work I…
A cheerful and entertaining performance of Verdi’s late comedy amidst the sylvan magic of West Green
The opera at West Green is back in the ‘green theatre’, rather than open air on the lake, but opened up at the back so that the house itself forms…
Pelléas et Mélisande at Munich
Nine years ago, in this same theatre at this same festival, I saw Munich’s previous Pelléas et Mélisande: a staging by Christiane Pohle which I greatly admired, but everyone else…
Unalloyed delight: Handel’s Acis and Galatea at Holland Park
This seems to be quite the year for Opera Holland Park: A revelatory Puccini Edgar, a powerful coupling of Wolf-Ferrari (Il segreto di Susanna) and Leoncavallo (Pagliacci), and now the…
DMMO: Best. Barber. Ever.
From the dancing light show during the sprightly overture to the closing precision of the flamenco-disco ensemble moves and every moment in between, Des Moines Metro Opera’s The Barber of…
Des Moines: Apollo’s Bare Body and Bared Souls
Des Moines Metro Opera’s World Premiere of Damien Geter and Lila Palmer’s American Apollo could hardly have been more of an “occasion.” This intriguing musical exploration of the artistic and…
Iowa’s Star-Powered Strauss
Salome is a big, big sing and happily, Des Moines Metro Opera has engaged a big, big star. “Dazzling” is too puny an adjective to describe Sara Gartland for her…