David McVicar’s production of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, making a welcome return to the New National Theatre, Tokyo, was seen on March 20. The revival, the first since its widely…
Category: Reviews
Simon Boccanegra and The Exterminating Angel in Paris
Both operas staged by famed (for many) or infamous (for others) Spanish stage director Calixto Bieito. Both Parisian Bieito productions bore this stage director’s signature touches — a complex, abstract…
Stylish Performances from Trinity College Cambridge
The Choir of Trinity College Cambridge has built an unassailable reputation for the quality of its recordings. Amongst the discs under the choir’s ex Director of Music Stephen Layton, there…
A remarkable Duke Bluebeard’s Castle from ENO
It would be hard to imagine greater stress levels on the morning of the opening night of English National Opera’s Duke Bluebeard’s Castle when soprano Allison Cook, scheduled to sing…
What a difference a conductor makes: Puccini’s less-wounded Butterfly
Two years ago, on this very site, I reviewed a matinée performance of Madama Butterfly at Covent Garden; the review was titled A Wounded Butterfly. The beautiful production by Moshe…
La fanciulla del West in Lyon
Forget the West of San Francisco born David Belasco’s The Girl of the Golden West (the source of Puccini’s opera), not to be confused with Peter Sellers’ The Girls of…
Pique Dame in Lyon
The Russian Avant-garde has attacked Lyon, Pique Dame is left in ruin! Enfant terrible (now forty years old) Russian avant-gardiste stage director Timofeï Kouliabine fled Russia in protest of its…
Staatsoper Hamburg’s new production of Il Trovatore is a hit-and-miss affair.
Modern stage directors famously like to shake things up. Immo Karaman, directing Hamburg’s new production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, has two guiding principles in the frame: this is an opera…
Wagner’s 1877 Grand Festival makes a thrilling return to the Albert Hall
In May 1877, Richard Wagner brought to London, for eight concerts, what would become known as Wagner’s Grand Festival. The year before, Der Ring des Niebelungen had been heard for…
Janáček’s Jenůfa burns intensely at ENO
One of Janáček’s most famous operas, Jenůfa is a clear masterpiece. Janáček, in his remarkable adaptation of Gabriela Preissová’s play Její pastorkyña (Her Stepdaughter), offers a searing tale of infanticide…