Despite its large cast, the drama of La fanciulla del West (1910) is ultimately one of the more intimate of Puccini’s operas, centred on the love triangle between Minnie, owner of the…
Category: Performances
Doubt in San Francisco
Chamber opera on a grand scale, such was San Francisco’s alternative opera company, Opera Parallèlel’s Doubt — two nuns, and a priest and the mother of a gay black male…
Doomed from the Start: the Fate of Dido and Aeneas in Purcell’s Opera
The balcony scene of Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet includes Juliet telling Romeo: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose/By any other name would smell as sweet.” Names matter…
An Evening of Wagner: The LSO and Sir Simon Rattle in tremendous form
It is rather extraordinarily more than twenty years since I last heard Sir Simon Rattle conduct Wagner (Parsifal at the Proms) so this ‘An Evening of Wagner’ was a great opportunity…
Asmik Grigorian and Lukas Geniušas at Wigmore Hall
The Wigmore Hall’s 125th Anniversary Festival is shaping up well: in one day, the venue offered Jordi Savall at lunchtime and Asmik Grigorian in the evening, both (as far as…
Milan on the Euphrates: Verdi’s Nabucodonosor at Teatro alla Scala
Riccardo Chailly’s tenure as Music Director of Teatro alla Scala is ending. Myung-Whun Chung will take over later this year. Over the past decade, Chailly has conducted one Verdi opera…
Rattle Returns to the LSO with Gerhard, Richard Strauss and Mahler
Vocal qualities matter enormously. Not just when it comes to the process of casting in the opera house, but when radically different items are programmed together in concert. I have…
Vive la Révolution à Wilmington!
Opera Delaware has served up such a bloody good, full-throated rendition of Giordano and Illica’s Andrea Chénier, that the cheering audience could not have been more boisterous in its rapturous…
A Pop-Up Potion: L’elisir d’amore Leaps from the Page at the NNTT
The New National Theatre Tokyo recently presented the fifth revival of Cesare Lievi’s popular 2010 production of L’elisir d’amore. At the 16 May matinee, the foyer buzzed with an audience…
Exceptional Student Performances of Britten’s Rape of Lucretia from The Royal Academy of Music
“It’s not exactly a work you enjoy” were words I overheard during the interval of this hugely impressive production of Britten’s first chamber opera given by Royal Academy of Music…