Oh, is there not one maiden breastWhich does not feel the moral beautyOf making worldly interestSubordinate to sense of duty? ‘The Slave of Duty’ is the subtitle of Gilbert and…
Category: Reviews
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra celebrates Stravinsky at the Proms
When Stravinsky’s ‘one-act ballet with songs’, Pulcinella,was first performed in 1920 – by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, with choreography by Léonide Massine and designs by Pablo Picasso – the music was…
Restrained passions in West Green Opera’s Eugene Onegin
‘Being in love is a complicated matter; although anyone who is prepared to pretend that love is a simple, straightforward business is always in a strong position for making conquests’.…
Grayston Ives’s engaging Requiem
There’s a degree of inevitability that a composer who has made numerous contributions to the repertoire for church and cathedral choirs spanning some fifty years might want to add a…
A very special Schumanniade, hosted by Bostridge, Coote and Drake, closes a season to cherish at Wigmore Hall
After keeping the music alive and the song flowing during an incredibly challenging 2020-21 season, Wigmore Hall’s artistic and executive director, John Gilhooly, offered one final feast of lieder to…
Heart & Hereafter: Elizabeth Llewellyn shines a lustrous light on the songs of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
Last September, soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn made her belated Wigmore Hall debut, an occasion which introduced me to Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Six Sorrow Songs – settings of Christina Rossetti’s poetry which I…
Quiet charm at Opera Holland Park: Mascagni’s L’Amico Fritz
‘So, we grew together,Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,But yet an union in partition,Two lovely berries moulded on one stem.’ I don’t know if Mascagni knew his Shakespeare, but…
A New Day: The King’s Singers, Live from London
The King’s Singers’ Live from London Summer programme was titled, optimistically, A New Day, reflecting the series’ theme of renewal and regeneration, and drawing together music ‘with a focus on…
The Golden Cockerel at the Aix Festival
It was Rimsky Korsakov’s last opera, his 1907 masterpiece Le Coq d’Or in one fell swoop (no intermission). In Aix Pushkin’s poetic Tzar Dodon met his fate, his head smashed,…
Le Comte Ory: a riotous romp concludes Garsington’s 2021 season
Announcing that there was a full house assembled for the final performance of Garsington’s Le Comte Ory, the Festival’s artistic director Douglas Boyd was greeted by a spontaneous burst of…