A premiere, an outstanding debut and a distinctive symphonic account formed a programme given by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales under its principal conductor Ryan Bancroft in the third…
Category: Reviews
Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake, Live from London: ‘Transfigured Love’
VOCES8’s Summer ’22 — LIVE From London series has offered the ensemble the opportunity to form new partnerships, and this recital by Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake was recorded in…
L’elisir d’amore delights at West Green House Opera
The grounds of West Green House in leafy Hampshire drew from director Victoria Newlyn an inspired staging of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. Situating this 1832 comic opera on a Mediterranean cruise…
Il tabarro: Sir Mark Elder and the Hallé Orchestra play Puccini at the Proms
A barge is moored along a wharf on the Seine River, the sluggish flow of which is a hard-working metaphor in Puccini’s one-act Il tabarro (The cloak) – for the…
Live from London – I Fagiolini: The Feast of San Rocco, Venice, 1608
In May 1608, the English traveller and eccentric, Thomas Coryat (c.1577-1617), set off on a continental tour of Europe which would take him, often on foot, through France and Italy…
Prom 17: London premiere of Jennifer Walshe’s The Site of an Investigation
I am sure one could find something these two works had in common if one tried; one always can. The question is whether it would be anything more than a…
Richard Blackford’s Pietà at the Three Choirs Festival
The Stabat Mater is a Latin hymn, probably dating from the 13th century, which commemorates and mediates upon the sorrow and grief of the Virgin Mary at the Crucifixion, as…
Des Moines’ Porgy and Bess Marks a Milestone
How was Des Moines Metro Opera’s closing performance of The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess a landmark event? Let me count the ways. First, it marked the successful completion of DMMO’s…
René Jacobs revisits Bach’s Mass in B minor
Having enjoyed René Jacobs’ superb recording of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis which was issued by harmonia mundi in 2021, I was looking forward to this new account of Bach’s Mass in B…
Frolicsome Fairies in Iowa’s Cornfields
With all the doom, gloom and dispiriting events dominating the news cycle, Des Moines Metro Opera served up a perfect antidote with a sassy yet classy staging of Benjamin Britten…