I was sceptical, I admit, for the first two acts of Claus Guth’s new production of Semele, but it came together and offered an anthropological and psychoanalytical interpretation of Handel’s…
Category: Performances
Così fan tutte in Munich
It is refreshing to find a Così fan tutte that takes the very greatest of Mozart and Da Ponte’s three masterpieces (for the most part) seriously. The amount of nonsense…
Cosi fan tutte at the Aix Festival
The Aix Festival was founded 75 summers ago as an altar to the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (in French it is pronounced Mose-art). This year Cosi is up again…
Le Prophète and Picture a Day Like This at the Aix Festival
Giacomo Meyerbeer was born near Berlin as Jacob Beer. Early in his professional life he joined his maternal grandfather’s given name, Meyer, to his father’s family name, taking on the…
An enlarged, multi-layered Carmen by Oper im Steinbruch intrigues and frustrates
Oper im Steinbruch (Opera in the Quarry) presents an annual spectacular outdoor opera production in the historic St. Margarethen quarry near Eisenstadt in Austria. In 2019, the opera was Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and after a…
Stirring performances at the First Night of the BBC Proms
This season opener brought together something new, rare and familiar – and with it, in the first half, a clear plea for freedom explicit in the choice of music by…
Ballets Russes at the Aix Festival
Not to be confused with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes or Wassily de Basil’s Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, it was Igor Stravinsky’s trilogy of ballet scores created for Paris based,…
A magnificent Philip II rescues Covent Garden’s revival of Don Carlo
Irrespective of the version of Don Carlo used, or the language in which it is sung, this is an uneven opera. The Verdi of the first two acts is, in…
L’Opéra de Quat’Sous at the Aix Festival
That’s The Three Penny Opera. While four “sous” wouldn’t get you in the door, the price of admission was far less than the usual offering at this lofty altar to…
The Bartered Bride still charms at Garsington
Paul Curran’s 2019 The Bartered Bride, set in late 1950s Britain, makes a welcome return to the Wormsley Estate in Rosie Purdie’s likeable revival. With a new cast, this folksy…