Hearing The Trojans in concert at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the Proms was, for me at least, a much happier experience than when it laboured under the crowd-pleasing would-be-musical-comedy served up by David McVicar’s production for the Royal Opera.
Category: Reviews
Rossini Il viaggio a Reims, Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House’s Jette Parker Young Artists programme is celebrating the 10th anniversary of their annual Summer Performance.
David et Jonathas at the Aix Festival
Rare, very rare repertory that is not even opera stole the show at the sixty fourth Aix Festival.
Le Nozze di Figaro in Aix-en-Provence
You pay your money, you takes your chances — that is festival life at its best. Sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn’t. The fun is in the risk, so the riskier the better.
Christoph PrÈgardien, Wigmore Hall
Seriousness, elegance and insight characterised this recital of nineteenth-century German song in which Christoph PrÈgardien and his accompanist, Julius Drake, conducted a moving musical dialogue, perfectly matching each other in the depiction of unbending obsession and unfulfilled aspiration.
BBC Prom 3: PellÈas et MÈlisande
21st-century opera played on period instruments; a ‘drama-less’ opera; a Dali-esque crimson chaise longue, stranded on the platform of the Royal Albert Hall.
Otello, Royal Opera
Elijah Moshinsky’s Otello, first seen at Covent Garden in 1987,
and revived numerous times with a range of stellar casts, may be traditional
and conservative, even — excepting the thunderous opening storm scene —
somewhat uninventive;
Triple Delights in the City of Light
Paris OpÈra seems to have saved the best for last as they wind up the current season with a trio of diverse and well-judged productions.
Written on Skin at the Aix Festival
Not about tattoo art, not an evocation of the Holocast, and let us not even try to put our finger on what it is about.
‘Ancient & Modern’ with Angelika Kirchschlager and Ian Bostridge
Ian Bostridge’s thought-provoking ‘Ancient and Modern’ project at the
Wigmore Hall is drawing to a close and this penultimate instalment brought
together Renaissance sensuality and Neo-classical restraint in a meticulously
executed performance.