– This disc, released on the B-records label earlier this year, preserves a live performance given by the French-Guianan soprano Marie-Laure Garnier, the French pianist Célia Oneto Bensaid and the…
Category: Reviews
The Bartered Bride still charms at Garsington
Paul Curran’s 2019 The Bartered Bride, set in late 1950s Britain, makes a welcome return to the Wormsley Estate in Rosie Purdie’s likeable revival. With a new cast, this folksy…
Woman at Point Zero at the Royal Opera House
Nawal El Saadawi’s 1975 novel, Woman at Point Zero, presents an ‘eve of death-row’ narrative which is a chilling indictment of patriarchal society. An Egyptian woman, Firdaus, has been convicted…
UK premiere of Barnum’s Bird at the Royal College of Music
‘I believe hugely in advertising and blowing my own trumpet, beating the gongs, drums, to attract attention to a show.’ So wrote Phineas Taylor Barnum to a publisher in 1860, adding, ‘As…
Treemonisha 2.0 in Joplin’s Hometown
It takes nearly forty minutes to get to the music Scott Joplin himself wrote for Treemonisha at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and I don’t mean that as a bad…
Saint Louis: Oh, Susannah!
From the downbeat of Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’ riveting production of Carlisle Floyd’s Susannah, there was a palpable electricity in the air. In fact, even before the first note…
Visually arresting Candide from Welsh National Opera
In the light of today’s cultural, financial and social turmoil, Welsh National Opera’s new production of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide is just the sort of tonic everyone needs. If its overworked…
Silver Stridencies of Sound: The Songs of Peter Wishart
Once again, a new release of world premiere recordings by Em Records has opened up a fertile path through the byways of English music, and there are rich rewards for…
Kazuki Yamada and the CBSO bring England and Japan into a wonderfully rewarding communion at Snape Maltings
We’ve become used to ‘hybrid’ meetings, where some members of a team meet in a workplace while others tune in from home, hotel rooms or elsewhere. Well, this is something…
The Queen of Spades at The Grange Festival
There’s nothing particularly Russian, or Slavic, about Paul Curran’s new production of Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades at The Grange Festival, though it’s heartening to see singers displaced from their…