Handel’s Rinaldo was first performed in 1711 at London’s King’s Theatre. Handel’s first opera for London was designed to delight and entertain, combining good tunes, great singing with a rollicking good story. Robert Carsen’s 2011 production of the opera for Glyndebourne reflected this with its tongue-in-cheek Harry Potter meets St Trinian’s staging.
Category: Reviews
Santa Fe Opera Presents The Impresario and Le Rossignol
On August 7, 2014, the Santa Fe Opera presented a double bill of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Impresario and Igor Stravinsky’s Le Rossignol (The Nightingale). The Impresario deals with the casting of an opera and Le Rossignol tells the well-known fairy tale about the plain gray bird with an exquisite song.
Barber in the Beehive State
Utah Festival Opera and Musical Theatre has gifted opera enthusiasts with a thrilling Barber, and I don’t mean . . . of Seville.
Stravinsky : Oedipus Rex, BBC Proms
In typical Proms fashion, BBC Prom 28 saw Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex performed in an eclectic programme which started with Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and also featured Electric Preludes by the contemporary Australian composer Brett Dean. Sakari Oramo,was making the first of his Proms appearances this year, conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra, BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Chorus.
Santa Fe Opera Presents a Passionate Fidelio
Santa Fe Opera presented Beethoven’s Fidelio for the first time in 2014. Since the sides of the opera house are open, the audience watched the sun redden the low hanging clouds and set below the Sangre de Cristo mountains while Chief Conductor Harry Bicket led the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra in the rousing overture. At the same time, Alex Penda as the title character readied herself for the ordeal to come as she endeavored to rescue her unjustly imprisoned husband.
Die Entf¸hrung aus dem Serail @ Hangar-7
We see the characters first in two boxes at an opera house. The five singers share a box and stare at the stage. But Konstanze’s eye is caught by a man in a box opposite: Bassa Selim (actor Tobias Moretti), who stares steadily at her and broods in voiceover at having lost her, his inspiration.
Rameau Grand Motets, BBC Proms
Best of the season so far! William Christie and Les Arts Florissants performed Rameau Grand Motets at late night Prom 17.
Adriana Lecouvreur, Opera Holland Park
Twelve years after Opera Holland Park’s first production of Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, the opera made a welcome return.
Back to the Beginnings: Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria at Iford Opera.
The Italianate cloister setting at Iford chimes neatly with Monteverdi’s penultimate opera The Return of Ulysses, as the setting cannot but bring to mind those early days of the musical genre.
Schoenberg : Moses und Aron, Welsh National Opera, London
Once again, we find ourselves thanking an unrepresentable being for Welsh National Opera’s commitment to its mission.