Category: Performances

Glyndebourne Festival Opera’s annual appearance at the Proms is always an eagerly-awaited event, but there is a varying degree of success with which the productions adapt from a full staging at Glyndebourne to a semi-staging suitable for the small platform and cavernous space of the Royal Albert Hall.

“Stage direction should not follow fashion, for fashion is the sister of death”.

The haunting, unsettling opening moments of the Glyndebourne premiere of Peter Eˆtvˆsí ìLove and Other Demonsî promised much, with sensitive playing by the solo celesta and harp, flutter-tongued flutes, and jarring bass stings.

Star-studded casts graced end of the season performances at the Wiener Staatsoper, with two versions of Verdiís Don Carlo on its menu.

For its ninth program of the Summer 2008 season the Grant Park Music Festival offered a balance of vocal, choral, and orchestral works from the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries.

I discovered many delights in my first ever visit to the Chautauqua Opera, not least of which was the lovely environment of the hilly Chautauqua Institution grounds which are dotted with picturesque and inviting old frame houses.

The novelty feature drawing veteran opera enthusiasts in general, and Richard Wagnerites in particular to Glimmerglass Opera this summer is that composerís ìDas Liebesverbot,î in what is touted as the North American fully staged premiere of this seldom-talked-about-and-even-less-performed early piece.

For two years, the subdued rumble of anticipation had been building to a forte.

The Philharmonia Orchestra has made a far more comprehensive effort than any other British ensemble to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the death of Ralph Vaughan Williams, with concerts taking place over the course of seven months in London, Leicester and Bedford including a complete symphony cycle.