In a notable departure from the complete works presented in past festivals, Des Moines Metro Opera adventurously programmed a mere fragment of an intriguing “work in progress,” American Apollo. To…
Category: Reviews
A rare double bill of Delius and Puccini: moving melodrama from Opera Holland Park
Opera Holland Park has a tradition of bringing little-known verismo operas into the light and making them shine. In recent years, the company has excelled with stagings of Mascagni’s Iris…
Vivaldi: The Great Venetian Mass – an inventive reimagining from Paul Agnew and Les Arts Florissants
It’s quite refreshing to read the rationale for a period-instrument recording which closes with the statement that the conductor-author makes ‘no great claims for the authenticity’ of the project. But,…
Prom 7: an ‘interventionist’ Dido and Aeneas from David Bates and La Nuova Musica
We have no idea what the first performance of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas sounded like, we’re not even sure when it took place. All we have are possibilities, probabilities, and a few…
l’incoronazione di Poppea in Aix
It is hard to say which was more impressive just now in Aix’s tiny Jeu de Paume theater — the musical edition of the Monteverdi masterpiece realized by conductor Leonardo…
Mother, Sister, Daughter: Musica Secreta create a community of sisters through spiritual song
Musica Secreta’s co-director, Laurie Stras, relishes an archival detective hunt. The ensemble’s 2019 recording, From Darkness into Light, presented the fruits of Stras’s discovery of what she described as ‘seventeen…
Moïse et Pharaon in Aix
Rossini at the hand of a non-Rossinian, stage director Tobias Kratzer, to the baton of a real Rossinian, conductor Michele Mariotti. At the downbeat it was pure Rossini, Mo. Mariotti…
Heinrich Schütz: David & Salomon – selections from the Psalms of David and Song of Solomon
This first foray into the music of Heinrich Schütz from Les Cris de Paris is an absolute winner, a superb addition to the composer’s discography of more than 100 recordings.…
Il Viaggio, Dante in Aix
A world premiere, the tenth opera of 67 year old, prolific French composer Pascal Dusapin in a production that will move on to Paris, Saarbrücken and Luxembourg. In the staging…
Hasse’s Antonio e Cleopatra at the Buxton International Festival
Like Handel before him, Johann Hasse (some 14 years Handel’s junior) left his native Germany to get some Italianate polish. His first major work was the serenata Antonio e Cleopatra,…