Hymn of the Forests was the programme title for what was really a celebration of events earlier in the day down the road at Westminster Abbey. There was certainly much…
Category: Reviews
Total Immersion: Kaija Saariaho
‘Total Immersion’ is a good way of describing the music of the Finnish composer, Kaija Saariaho. The spectral sonorities that she creates by synthesising, manipulating and layering timbres, harmonies and…
Past Glories Revisited from the Choir of Christ Church, Oxford
This bumper box set from Decca encapsulates a golden age for the Choir of Christ Church, Oxford. Encased in their former jacket designs, the 19 discs showcase recordings made during…
Arminio at the Royal Opera House
Arminio was the first new opera in Handel’s 1736-37 season at Covent Garden, performed for the first time on 12th January 1737. After six performances it was withdrawn and remained…
La Juive in Hannover: a medieval tale for the modern age
Three days before Lydia Steier’s 2019 production of Fromental Halévy’s La Juive received its first revival at the Staatsoper in Hannover, a British MP – a Minister for Immigration –…
A joyless Orfeo in Hannover
“On this happy and auspicious day which marks the end of the amorous sufferings of our demi-god, let us sing, shepherds, such sweet melodies, that worthy of Orpheus may be…
Victorian Villainy: Opera della Luna at Wilton’s Music Hall
Frankenstein’s ‘creature’, Count Dracula, Henry Jekyll-Edward Hyde: nineteenth-century fiction has furnished some notable literary monsters who continue to captivate the contemporary imagination. Sweeney Todd, barbarous barber and supplier of sickening…
Tosca in San Jose (CA)
There was Tosca at Berlin’s Volksbühne sung by actors (not singers), there was Tosca at the Aix Festival documenting the demise of an aged diva. But mostly Tosca is the…
Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence at the Royal Opera House
Kaija Saariaho’s latest opera, first seen at the 2021 Festival d’Aix en Provence, has now reached another of its co-commissioners, the Royal Opera House. It would be difficult to overstate…
‘Babi Yar’: Shostakovich, Noseda and the LSO
Shostakovich’s ‘Babi Yar’ Symphony, his thirteenth, is amongst his greatest works – and yet in a sense it disappeared completely after its troubled premiere on December 18th, 1962. The composer…