Rossini’s libretti often require one to leave logic at the theatre entrance and embrace the absurd – stock buffa characters, stolen and switched identities, arranged marriages, double nuptials, an inevitable…
Category: Performances
Cries in the High Desert
Beginning in 1957, the venerable Santa Fe Opera festival embarked on an ambitious journey that included presenting world premieres, in which series this summer’s The Lord of Cries is the…
Figaro la, Figaro qua in Santa Fe
Like the barber in another famous piece, Santa Fe Opera’s The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) is frequently all over the place. There may be a number of…
Santa Fe Opera Fields a Dream Team
If ever there was a nigh perfect match of an opera with idyllic outdoor surroundings, Santa Fe Opera’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is surely the one. The opening thirty minutes…
Aida at the Macerata Opera Festival
The Macerata Opera Festival celebrates its centenary season this year with the same opera that opened the first season of the festival in 1921: Verdi’s Aida. Summer opera in Macerata…
Handel’s Heroes and Heroines: Mary Bevan and Barnaby Smith, Live from London
The now-familiar Live from London format was slightly revised for this recital of sinfonias, arias and duets from Handel’s oratorios and operas, titled Handel: Heroes and Heroines. VOCES8 were represented…
Cheery charm in Opera Holland Park’s The Pirates of Penzance
Oh, is there not one maiden breastWhich does not feel the moral beautyOf making worldly interestSubordinate to sense of duty? ‘The Slave of Duty’ is the subtitle of Gilbert and…
The BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra celebrates Stravinsky at the Proms
When Stravinsky’s ‘one-act ballet with songs’, Pulcinella,was first performed in 1920 – by Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes, with choreography by Léonide Massine and designs by Pablo Picasso – the music was…
Restrained passions in West Green Opera’s Eugene Onegin
‘Being in love is a complicated matter; although anyone who is prepared to pretend that love is a simple, straightforward business is always in a strong position for making conquests’.…
A very special Schumanniade, hosted by Bostridge, Coote and Drake, closes a season to cherish at Wigmore Hall
After keeping the music alive and the song flowing during an incredibly challenging 2020-21 season, Wigmore Hall’s artistic and executive director, John Gilhooly, offered one final feast of lieder to…