At the Metropolitan Opera, performances of the same opera with the same singers just a few days apart often sound very different. During the recent run of Fidelio, for example,…
Category: Broadcasts
Silver Bells: VOCES8 on Christmas Eve
In 2021, VOCES8 invited us to pull a Christmas Cracker. This year they encouraged us to relish the quiet sparkle of Silver Bells. Their Christmas Eve live stream, from the…
O Magnum Mysterium: The Gesualdo Six celebrate Advent at LIVE from London
The Gesualdo Six performed at the very first LIVE from London festival, back in the summer of 2020 presenting music associated with the Compline service, the works linked by a…
VOCES8: LIVE from London – Christmas 2023
In a personal note to accompany his second solo disc, Bach, VOCES8’s artistic director Barnaby Smith observed that approaching his ‘beloved’ Bach’s music filled him with ‘some trepidation’: ‘I’m sure…
Kazuki Yamada and the CBSO bring England and Japan into a wonderfully rewarding communion at Snape Maltings
We’ve become used to ‘hybrid’ meetings, where some members of a team meet in a workplace while others tune in from home, hotel rooms or elsewhere. Well, this is something…
An Anatomy of Melancholy
‘Melancholy can be overcome only by melancholy.’ One imagines that countertenor Iestyn Davies and lutenist Thomas Dunford have taken heed of the words of the English clergyman Robert Burton –…
VOCES8 and the VOCES8 Scholars perform Vaughan Williams’ Mass in G in Milton Abbey
The closing concert of VOCES8’s annual summer school and festival at Milton Abbey was a contribution to this year’s commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Vaughan…
Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake, Live from London: ‘Transfigured Love’
VOCES8’s Summer ’22 — LIVE From London series has offered the ensemble the opportunity to form new partnerships, and this recital by Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake was recorded in…
Svadba: Ana Sokolović’s opera is creatively re-imagined through image and movement
In Germany, wedding guests smash piles of crockery the night before the ceremony, the custom of Polterabend being thought to bring good fortune to the bride and groom in their…
ETO at Home: Ferrandini’s Il pianto di Maria
English Touring Opera’s ETO at Home project has seen the company produce a series of films of operas, large scale vocal works, chamber music and song which can be viewed…