Category: Performances

There is some slim irony to an opera company pursuing the complicated business of staging Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in the current economy — it entails the very sort of dubious compromises that get Wotan and crew into such hot water (if one assumes the cataclysmic fire at the end of Gˆtterd‰mmerung heated the Rhine).

After a problematic debut last Autumn with Der fliegende Holl‰nder at the Barbican, London’s newest opera-in-concert outfit returned this month with Fidelio at the smaller Cadogan Hall.

It is not often that the team of stage director, set and costume designer get the biggest, most boisterously rowdy roar of approval at opera’s end.

To say that Dr Atomic landed in London with a bang is shocking, but the subject it deals with is meant to be disturbing. Unlike the scientists at Los Alamos, we can’t live in denial of the wider implications. This isn’t history. It’s a universal dilemma, utterly relevant today.

Jonathan Miller’s new production of Puccini’s wintry opera was denied its planned opening night on Monday 2nd February by a bout of unusually heavy snow which brought most of London’s transport services to a halt and turned it into a virtual ghost town (thus, up the road at Covent Garden, the cancellation of a performance of Korngold’s ‘Die tote Stadt’ was equally ironic).

There is a visceral pleasure in hearing so many healthy sets of young lungs tearing into this music, and they do sing, they do not bellow.

This Der fliegende Holl‰nder was eagerly awaited as it hasn’t been heard at the Royal Opera House, London, since 2000. With Bryn Terfel’s return to Covent Garden as the Dutchman guaranteed a full house.

Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, his 30^th opera, is based on Victor Hugo’s play of the same name, and had its premiere at La Scala in 1833.

The Plague of Beautiful Sounds: Has Bel Canto gone too far?