Covid-19 brought English Touring Opera’s Spring 2020 tour of Giulio Cesare, Così fan tutte and the St John Passion to an untimely halt, but the company got back on the…
Category: Reviews
Mozart’s Betulia Liberata: Christophe Rousset and Les Talens Lyriques
Metastasio must have topped the charts in Padua in the early 1770s. Performances of settings of his libretto Betulia Liberata seem to have abounded, with the Bohemian Josef Mysliveček’s account,…
The 2020 Kathleen Ferrier Award Final
Regular Opera Today readers will know that the annual Kathleen Ferrier Award Final is a keenly anticipated event in my musical year. This year the Competition’s progress, inevitably, was somewhat…
The Royal Opera House Christmas Concert
Lockdowns and homeworking have made pyjamas the sartorial style of choice during 2020, so who would be surprised that director Dan Dooner decided to turn the Royal Opera House’s Christmas…
Messe de Minuit: I Fagiolini
Long, long ago,Oh! so long agoChrist was born in BethlehemTo heal the world’s woe. On Christmas Eve in 1940, while he was a prisoner of war at Laufen Castle in…
VOCES8 sing Winter Tales
VOCES8’s concerts often resemble a Christmas tin of Quality Street chocolates – there’s something for everyone, and ‘favourites’ abound. But, the ensemble’s range – and ambition – is impressive; during…
John Sheppard’s Media vita: The Choir of New College, Oxford
Modern scholarship directed at the English Reformation composer John Sheppard (c.1515-58) has come a long way since Peter le Huray’s research during the 1960s and David Wulstan’s pioneering performances a…
Choir of Keble College, Oxford: Ave Rex Angelorum
Ancient plainchant, medieval texts and numinous harmonies form a unifying thread for this uplifting recent disc from the Choir of Keble College Oxford recorded in the warm acoustic of Buckfast…
Iestyn Davies and Arcangelo, at Wigmore Hall
I have a vague memory of having heard Iestyn Davies sing Handel’s Nine German Arias before at Wigmore Hall, perhaps ten or so years ago … but my review files…
Pagliacci: The Grange Festival
If theatre in general, and verismo opera in particular, is based on the tension between pretence and reality, art and life, this performance of Pagliacci at The Grange in leafy…