‘I’ve seen & am seeing Auden a lot, & our immediate future is locked with his, it seems.’ So wrote Benjamin Britten to his sister, Barbara, on 3 September 1939.[1]…
Category: Performances
Zoraida in Wexford: Forgotten But Not Gone
It was a big leap today from the effervescent afternoon performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s acclaimed comic delight, The Daughter of the Regiment, to the somber evening show of the same…
Afternoon Laughs in Wexford
If the Wexford Festival’s evening fare in their Women & War themed season is deadly serious, the afternoon offerings were chockful of amusing confections that are more fun than a…
Wexford Festival’s Stunning Two Women
When you enter the auditorium for the performance of Mark Tutino, Fabio Ceresa and Luca Rossi’s La ciociara (Two Women), the darkened stage is fronted on the far left apron…
Red Dawn Rises Again in Wexford
The venerable Wexford Festival’s M.O. is rehabilitating forgotten operas from the past, and few are further beyond recollection than Camille Erlanger’s competent potboiler, L’Aube rouge (The Red Dawn). The libretto…
Gallery of Memories: Mary Bevan & Anna Tilbrook at the Oxford International Song Festival
There was a veritable feast of new music at this year’s Oxford International Song Festival, much of it commissioned by the Festival itself. Gallery of Memories, a song cycle by…
The Glass Eye: an important and impressive new song cycle at the Oxford International Song Festival
Introducing Alex Ho’s new song cycle, The Glass Eye, before this evening recital at the Oxford International Song Festival, Artistic Director Sholto Kynoch noted that this was the most substantial…
Filiations – Les compositrices de la Conservatoire de Paris: Oxford International Song Festival
In a review in Le Temps in 1937, Florent Schmitt commented, ‘It was, if I may say, the great feminine week: at the Concerts Lamoureux the Concerto of Mlle Jeanne…
Life Victoria: Oxford International Song Festival
Two events on day thirteen of the Festival, in partnership with LIFE Victoria in Barcelona, marked the centenary of the great Spanish soprano Victoria de los Angeles, a celebration that…
Un ballo in maschera: Chelsea Opera Group at Cadogan Hall
The title of Un ballo in maschera may suggest elegance and courtly high jinx, but Verdi’s opera, with its vengeful assassins, Beelzebub-conjuring sorceress and murderous drawing of lots is a…