This was recital programming of the very highest level, the first half a cycle of lullabies; the second a celebration of the female creatrix in Her various forms. It all…
Category: Performances
The Makropulos Case with Simon Rattle and the LSO
Simon Rattle’s twin traversal of the Janáček operas in concert in London and onstage in Berlin has now reached The Makropulos Case in the former, Claus Guth’s staging for the…
Barber’s Vanessa Comes to Boston
Samuel Barber’s first opera, Vanessa, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958 – when serialist abstraction and stark realism dominated the world of modern opera. Many critics immediately dismissed it…
The Power to Inspire: Dame Sarah Connolly at Wigmore Hall
Composers have always been inspired to write for others: this is one of the rich seams of inventiveness running through so much music, old and new. Over many decades Dame…
A Memory That Became A Story – Baruch’s Silence at Muffled Voices Festival
“Leave alone, just leave alone, child. He who cannot, cannot. Not every memory becomes a story, and not every story can be reduced to words.” It absolutely feels reductive to…
“A World Of Pleasure”: The Delta King’s Blues at INseries
Who knew that a Faustian story would work so well in an American setting? All I can say after seeing this version by Damien Geter and Jarrod Lee is: Eat…
A Mixed Messiah from AAM
… and so to my second and final Messiah this year. I mention this, despite the fact he first was reviewed for a different website: Wild Arts’ staged Messiah at…
Noël à la Chapelle: Magnificat
Christmas comes to Versailles, and the magnificent Chapelle Royale, courtesy of Le Poème Harmonique and Vincent Dumestre, one of the finest conductors of Baroque music around. There was even a…
The Triumph of Abstract Beauty: Saburo Teshigawara’s Orfeo ed Euridice returns to the New National Theatre Tokyo
The much-awaited revival of Saburo Teshigawara’s 2022 production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, seen on December 6, truly embodied the spirit of “less is sometimes more.” First presented in Vienna…
Strong Personalities Enliven ENO’s HMS Pinafore
Not so much a fearsome man-o’-war, this HMS Pinafore was more a tea clipper with a crew of jolly tars that could have come straight from the long-running radio series…