Commanding soprano performances of put-upon heroines securely anchored two recent evenings at the Bastille Opera House.
Category: Performances
Luca Pisaroni at the Wigmore Hall, London
After hearing his stunning Leporello at Glyndebourne and his Figaro at Salzburg, there was no way I was going to miss Luca Pisaroni’s concert with Wolfram Rieger at the Wigmore Hall, London. But I was delighted by how wonderful he sounded close up in recital.
Dialogues des CarmÈlites, Guildhall, London
Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des CarmÈlites is an unusual opera, but much sensitive musical thinking has gone into this production at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London.
L’Africaine, OONY
EugËne Scribe and Giacomo Meyerbeer were in the business of creating
proto-cinematic spectacles of drama and music, the formula being to take a historical incident in some exotic country or era, put in a tormented love story to hold our attention, and resolve the whole in catastrophe.
Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado
The front leg of the grand piano may rest at a rather precarious angle, and
the out-sized martini glass lean a trifle askew, but Jonathan Miller’s
1986 production of Gilbert & Sullivan’s The Mikado wears its
twenty-five years lightly — as do Stefanos Lazaridis’
eye-wateringly white, gleaming sets.
Roderick Williams, Wigmore Hall
Relaxed, confident and composed, baritone Roderick Williams, accompanied by
pianist Helmut Deutsch, gave a polished and performance before a warmly
appreciative Wigmore Hall audience, performing an interesting selection of
songs by Wolf, Korngold, Mahler and Schumann.
CosÏ fan tutte, Palm Beach
Little is known about the extent to which Mozart and Da Ponte collaborated on the libretto for CosÏ fan tutte.
Schubert Transcribed, Wigmore Hall
Schubert, but not quite as we know him. You can always rely on the Wigmore Hall to promote adventurous recitals.
RomÈo et Juliette, Philadelphia
Neither the music nor the libretto of Charles Gounod’s RomÈo et
Juliette is quite compelling enough to have made it a popular standard.
IphigÈnie en Tauride, New York
Gluck’s operas are part of a continuum, a tradition of French vocal
declamation (as opposed to the Italian school of flights of elegant,
open-throated vocal fantasy) that can be traced to him from Lully and Rameau,
and then from Gluck through certain works of Mozart and Gluck’s pupil,
Salieri to the operas of Spontini, Berlioz and Wagner.