Musically, a first-rate Midsummer Night’s Dream from The Grange Festival

Thank goodness for modern technology and sophisticated recording techniques, without which this production of Pears’s and Britten’s cherry-picked edit of Shakespeare’s play might have been scuppered.  A month before curtain-up…

Puccini’s Manon Lescaut at the Grange Festival

Stephen Lawless’ production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut opened at the Grange Festival on 26 June 2021, the third of this year’s three opera productions all originally planned for 2020. Elin Pritchard was…

Mixed performances in a recent St Matthew Passion from Accentus

Claims to create ‘a new and fresh perspective’ in the pre-release publicity for this St Matthew Passion are bold.  We are led to expect ‘raging choirs, intimate chorales and emotionally…

Handel’s London Altos: Iestyn Davies at Kings Place

At Kings Place it’s currently half-portions and double-helpings: to ‘get round’ the 50% capacity restrictions, the answer is simply to perform the concert twice – and Iestyn Davies and the…

Rewarding performances from Philippe Herreweghe in three of J.S. Bach’s choral works

Every freshly minted disc from Philippe Herreweghe’s Collegium Vocale Gent prompts a rapturous fanfare.  We take for granted the quality of each recording venture from this 74-year-old Belgian, but how…

Leeds Lieder Festival: Benjamin Britten’s Five Canticles

Benjamin Britten’s five Canticles span his compositional career, from 1947 to 1974, and reflect the eclectic musical, poetic and cultural influences and idioms which he integrated into an independent expressive…

Natalya Romaniw and Iain Burnside: a wonderful lunchtime recital at Leeds Lieder 2021

Natalya Romaniw’s compelling but frustratingly foreshortened debut as Cio-Cio San at English National Opera in February 2020 was one of the last live performances I heard before the theatres of…

Rimsky-Korsakov’s Ivan the Terrible at Grange Park Opera

Rimsky-Korsakov wrote 15 operas yet few have attained any sort of currency outside of Russia. As part of its Spaced Season 2021, Grange Park Opera presented Rimsky-Korsakov’s Ivan the Terrible…

An excellent Figaro at Opera Holland Park

What a welcome return to Holland Park this proved to be. Glorious weather helped, of course—quite a change from an earlier visit to Glyndebourne with altogether necessary overcoat and umbrella—but…

Dido’s Ghost: music and myth, remembered and relived

If you’re a fan of postmodern magic realistic fiction – think Salman Rushdie, Italo Calvino, Gabriel García Márquez et al – then you’ll love Errollyn Wallen new opera Dido’s Ghost,…