As promised at and by the fundraiser concert of Russian art songs and arias in January, Bel Cantanti’s opera gala this year was a celebration of Russian opera, with longer…
Category: Performances
The Britten/Piper outlier: Owen Wingrave at Guildhall School of Music & Drama
The most famous result of collaboration between Benjamin Britten and Myfanwy Piper is The Turn of the Screw (1954), arguably Britten’s most successful opera and surely the one in which…
George Jeffreys & the Birth of the English Baroque
It was completely apt that the first music heard in Solomon’s Knot’s evening dedicated to composer George Jeffreys was some Byrd: the five-part Bow thine eare, O Lord (a contrafactum…
A Revelation of Restraint: Rigoletto at the New National Theatre Tokyo
The magnificent revival of Emilio Sagi’s 2013 production of Rigoletto, seen at the New National Theatre, Tokyo, on 23 February, proved an arresting experience. While the staging remained consistent with…
Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Temple to Consumerism Consolidated in English National Opera’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
First performed in Leipzig in 1930 within the shadow of the Weimar Republic, the clue to Brecht and Weill’s dystopian opera lies in its title. There was nothing in this…
Carmen at the Bastille
Stage director Calixito Bieito’s 1999 production of Carmen made its way to the Opéra Bastille in 2017, one year after its performances in San Francisco, and three years after its…
Delightful Divas Divvy Up Delectable Delicacies at Loudoun Lyric Opera in The Italian Lesson and Bon Appétit!
This weekend Loudoun Lyric Opera opened their charming production of Lee Hoiby’s The Italian Lesson and Bon Appétit!, a double-bill they named Baking with Divas. As opera on a small…
Eugene Onegin in Paris
Eugène Onéguine at the Opéra Garnier was an intimate exploration of the first opera in the Tchaikovsky operatic canon, directed by British actor Ralph Fiennes, an Onegin himself in the excellent…
Un ballo in maschera in Paris
Un Bal Masqué at the Bastille, the 41st performance of Belgian stage director Gilbert Deflo’s 2007 production (the sixth in this edition). This performance was the first with American soprano…
A Coney Island Cosi: ENO’s Oh-So-Busy Production
Relocation, relocation, relocation: Coney Island, Booklyn, is a long way from the Bay of Naples. But such is the setting for Phelim McDermott’s Cosi fan tutte; or is that Cosi…