Category: Reviews

‘Apt for voices or viols’: eager to maximise sales among the domestic market in Elizabethan England, publishers emphasised that the music contained in collections such as Thomas Morley’s First Book of Madrigals to Four Voices of 1594 was suitable for performance by any combination of singers and players.

For its latest production of the current season Lyric Opera of Chicago is presenting Franz Leh·r’s The Merry Widow (Die lustige Witwe) featuring RenÈe Fleming /Nicole Cabell as the widow Hanna Glawari and Thomas Hampson as Count Danilo Danilovich.

Mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli has been a regular favourite at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam since 1996. Her verastile concerts are always carefully constructed and delivered with irrepressible energy and artistic
commitment.

When Italian director Damiano Michieletto visited Covent Garden in June this year, he spiced Rossini’s Guillaume Tell with a graphic and, many felt, gratuitous rape scene that caused outrage and protest.

Verdi Giovanna d’Arco at Teatro alla Scala, Milan, starting the new season. Primas at La Scala are a state occasion, attended by the President of Italy and other dignitaries.

This performance by countertenor Iestyn Davies and tenor Allan Clayton was a
stirring celebration of the diversity and continuity that characterises vocal
settings of English texts by English and American composers, past and present.
Imaginatively and intelligently devised by pianist James Baillieu, the
programme demonstrated the affective power of music ranging from the simplest
to the most sophisticated forms of vocal expression, and encompassed art-song,
folk-song, realisations, quasi-operatic mini-drama and spiritual
meditation.

At the Wigmore Hall, the London premiere of a major new work by Howard Skempton, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, with Roderick Williams and BCMG, the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group.

A fairy tale that looks like clay animation come to life, terrifies and
enchants, and rakes up heaps of middle class guilt—this is Dutch National
Opera’s new production of Hänsel und Gretel, set on the
most attractive rubbish tip you will ever come across.

The American countertenor Bejun Mehta exhibited a considerable range of
vocal colours, refined phrasing and spectacular virtuosity in this programme of
Baroque cantatas and arias, with La Nuova Musica, under the direction of the
ensemble’s founder, David Bates.