To most Japanese, the overture of Guillaume Tell (William Tell) is familiar, evoking memories of Sports Day at elementary school. Nevertheless, this was the first full-scale staged production of Rossini’s…
Category: Performances
ENO’s fun-filled Pirates of Penzance
Currently showing at the Coliseum, few would argue this revival of Mike Leigh’s Pirates of Penzance isn’t entertaining. Never mind the absurd storyline involving an apprentice pirate whose wish to…
Fanny and Alexander: world premiere of Mikael Karlsson’s opera at La Monnaie, Brussels
Not only are Ingmar Bergman’s films very ‘operatic’ in their poetic but visceral way of dealing with matters of life and death, opera as an art form had a place…
Flamboyant Rake’s Progress from Opéra national de Paris
The stars are truly aligned for this latest revival of Olivier Py’s Rake’s Progress, a glitzy production first unveiled at the Palais Garnier in 2008. Underpinned by a strong international…
The BBCSO explore the relationship with God and Man in works by Haydn, Moussa and Strauss
On the face of it music criticism has often seemed to me a very unimaginative profession. Take this BBCSO concert, for example, the programming of which has largely appeared to…
Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at Lyric Opera of Chicago
The production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, directed by Barbara Gaines and first featured during the 2015-16 season, has returned to Lyric Opera of Chicago. While audiences…
Of human suffering: the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s powerful Shostakovich Babi Yar
You’d have to be a strange kind of human being not to smell death in Shostakovich’s Thirteenth Symphony. Icy, spooky and deeply unsettling orchestral sounds at the outset give way…
BCMG at Wigmore Hall
London visits from the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group are rarer than we might hope, though doubtless many would object, quite reasonably, that visits to the capital need not be its…
Fine singing in English National Opera’s new production of The Elixir of Love
OK, so here’s the deal. I can sell you a love potion which will make the object of your desire fall head over heels in love with you. Guaranteed. You…
Carmen in San Francisco
Francesca Zambello’s 2006 Covent Garden Carmen rehashed once again by San Francisco Opera. This time with French mezzo-soprano Eve-Maud Hubeaux in the title role. In 2017 alone Mme. Hubeaux transformed…