Garsington Opera planned its production of Dvořák’s Rusalka for 2020 with Natalya Romaniw in the title role. Cancelled and re-scheduled for 2022, thankfully still with Romaniw, the production debuted last…
Category: Reviews
OTSL: Awakenings Rouses Empathy
Composer Tobias Picker and librettist Aryeh Lev Stollman have created an emotional rollercoaster of an operatic experience with Awakenings, yet another world premiere by the enterprising Opera Theatre of Saint…
Platée at the Palais Garnier (Paris)
The French are indeed “frogs!” Rameau’s Platée (1745) as told by stage director Laurent Pelly is yet another proof. This production appeared first in 1999, then again in 2005, 2007…
Harvey Milk : Prejudice and Pride in Saint Louis
It’s Pride Month, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis can be justifiably “proud” of its absorbing new production of Harvey Milk, in its most recent iteration by composer Stewart Wallace…
London premiere of Tom Coult’s Violet at the Hackney Empire
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the starsDid wander darkling in the eternal space,Rayless, and pathless, and the ice earthSwung blind…
Handsome performances in Verdi’s Otello from Grange Park Opera
Shadows, suspicion and saintliness each find a tragic outlet in Grange Park Opera’s Otello – Verdi’s late masterpiece, prompted by his publisher and premiered in 1887 following a period of…
Die tote Stadt at Longborough Festival Opera
‘Bruges était sa morte. Et sa morte était Bruges.’ In his novella Bruges-la-Morte (1892), the Belgian symbolist author George Rodenbach makes clear the affinity between the ‘dead city’, Bruges, and…
The Excursions of Mr Brouček at Grange Park Opera
Hats off to Grange Park Opera for unquestionably the best of the four ‘country house’ operas I have seen so far this season. First, and perhaps most important, with respect…
A Wounded Butterfly at Covent Garden
Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, beautiful though it is, presents issues for contemporary values; hence the current rethink of the Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier production. The Royal Opera brought in Japanese…
Rouvali’s mighty and stereophonic ‘Resurrection’ closes his first season with the Philharmonia
The final concert of the Philhamonia Orchestra’s Spring-Summer season came to an end with that greatest of Mahler blockbuster symphonies, the choral ‘Resurrection’. It also marked the end of Santtu-Matias…