This new Rape of Lucretia, seen first at Snape, now in the Royal Opera House’s Linbury Studio Theatre, fittingly features singers from two young artists’ programmes: Britten Pears and Jette…
Category: Reviews
Elektra at Washington National Opera
Of standard repertoire operas, Richard Strauss’s Elektra may be the toughest to perform. It requires a gargantuan orchestra of extreme virtuosity, a conductor who can mold 100 minutes of increasing…
La traviata in San Francisco
Wondrous things do still happen at San Francisco Opera. Like the La traviata last night where conductor Eun Sun Kim built a perfect synergy with soprano Pretty Yende and tenor…
Orfeo ed Euridice in San Francisco
One of opera’s most awesome scores came, finally, to the the War Memorial Opera House stage, arriving with flying colors in stage director Matthew Ozawa’s fine new, bigtop-like production. An…
Glyndebourne travels to the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury
Desire, disease and death are inseparable in Puccini’s La bohème. As Rodolfo says to Marcello in Act 3, when he explains why he is leaving Mimì, despite his love for…
Richard Jones brings a wry twist to Alcina’s magic powers at the Royal Opera House
‘The Only Path’. So reads the insignia emblazoned on the drop curtain, as the overture to Alcina strikes up in the Royal Opera House pit at the start of Richard…
WNO’s La bohème at the Birmingham Hippodrome
Annabel Arden’s production of La bohème is ten years old now, but somehow I’ve contrived not to encounter it during my visits to the Birmingham Hippodrome during the last decade. …
Mortality and meaning: Welsh National Opera’s superb Makropulos Case at the Birmingham Hippodrome
Elina Makropulos, the ‘heroine’ of Leoš Janáček’s 1925 opera The Makropulos Case (Věc Makropulos), has been alive for 337 years, her longevity prolonged by an experimental potion given to her…
A masterly traversal of Duparc songs
The habit among composers of almost excessive self-criticism has been a curiously French phenomenon over the last century, typified by Dukas, Duruflé and his younger, more progressive contemporary Henri Dutilleux.…
To La Scala Picturehouse, for an intriguing triple bill at Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Nino Rota’s one-act radio opera, Il due timidi, was composed for Radio Audizioni Italiane and first broadcast in November 1950. Its first London performance took place at the Scala Theatre…