Irrelohe. An orchestral orgy — triple winds, quadruple brass though six horns, two harps, organ, celeste, guitar, mandolins, an eighth player percussion battery plus tympani and strings. Libretto and music…
Category: Reviews
“Family Secrets”* at the Opéra de Lyon (Rigoletto)
Rigoletto. Docudrama of a father whose wife dies in childbirth, raises daughter who falls in love with a selfish, debauched hoodlum. Show curtain is block apartment lighted windows. And they…
Louise Alder and Joseph Middleton at Wigmore Hall
Louise Alder’s lunchtime recital at Wigmore Hall, with pianist Joseph Middleton, was almost operatic in its scope and emotional energy. And, Alder showed her fearlessness by opening her programme with…
Dove, Weir and Martin from the Choir of Westminster Abbey
Hyperion has brought together three composers with a special affinity for choral music, as already demonstrated in earlier recordings devoted solely to their music on Delphian, Naxos and Opus Arte…
Ariadne auf Naxos at the Met
A funny thing happened at the Metropolitan Opera last Thursday, during the final performance of a recent run of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. In the silence after the applause…
Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera House
“What harbour shelters peace, away from tidal waves, away from storms?” The opening moments of Deborah Warner’s new production of Britten’s Peter Grimes at the Royal Opera House make it…
Eastertide Evensong from St John’s College, Cambridge
Does the release of a second live evensong album from this celebrated choir reflect a growing interest in the music and ritual within our great cathedrals and collegiate chapels? Whatever…
Werther in Marseille
The Opéra de Marseille assembled a fine cast to perform the Massenet masterpiece in a prize winning production from Nancy. Bordeaux tenor Thomas Bettinger poured his heart out as the…
A brilliant Hansel and Gretel from Stephen Barlow and the Royal College of Music
The escalating cost of living crisis may soon result in many children in the UK sharing Hansel’s hunger pangs: ‘O Gret, it would be such a treat, if we had…
Pelléas et Mélisande in Montpellier
A third staging of French stage director Benjamin Lazar’s poetic and sophisticated production (Malmö in 2017 and Karlsruhe in 2019), highly refined in Montpellier by an early music tenor as…