This is surely Sir Antonio Pappano’s “Wagner period”: his recent Siegfried, the latest instrument of an ongoing Ring at RBO revealed, to my ears at least, his finest Wagner to date. He has,…
Category: Recitals/Concerts
La Morte d’Orfeo (various) in Munich
Founded to enable ‘historically informed’ performances of the three surviving operas of Monteverdi, Munich’s Monteverdi Continuo Ensemble both celebrated its thirtieth anniversary and commemorated the life of one of its…
Two Large Servings of German Romanticism with Florian Boesch
Loewe: the German word for lion. There was Lerner and Loewe, of course. Except that the 20th century example of Loewe is rarely mentioned on its own. But there is…
Fervour and Commitment from Chelsea Opera Group in Mozart’s Precocious Idomeneo
Although Idomeneo (1781) is Mozart’s first indisputable operatic masterpiece and was a work for which he retained considerable affection, it still receives surprisingly few performances, either on stage or in concert.…
Handel’s Serse at Barbican
Most recently seen in March in a stunning Tamerlano at Shoreditch Town Hall as part of the 2026 London Handel Festival, Laurence Cummings and the Academy of Ancient Music now gave us…
Wolf Trap Opera Artists Share Music on an Intimate Scale in Salon Series
On Monday, Wolf Trap Opera opened their Salon Series with a concert by two of their young artists: soprano Magdalena Kuzma and baritone Jonathan Patton. With limited seating in a…
Charity Begins at Grange Festival for Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito
With its accumulating drama and superbly sung set pieces, this account of Mozart’s 1791 operatic farewell gave every reason why it should be heard more often, whether in fully staged…
Soprano Sondra Radvonovsky at the Princeton Festival
The Princeton Festival has recently emerged as a satisfying summer destination for opera lovers in the broader New York area. It presents one major opera annually and also a concert…
125 years young: Wigmore Hall celebrates with Lise Davidsen
Happy “birth”- day to Wigmore Hall (inasmuch as bricks and mortar are birthed). On the hall’s actual 125th anniversary, it was Lise Davidsen and the equally astonishing collaborative pianist James…
An Evening of Wagner: The LSO and Sir Simon Rattle in tremendous form
It is rather extraordinarily more than twenty years since I last heard Sir Simon Rattle conduct Wagner (Parsifal at the Proms) so this ‘An Evening of Wagner’ was a great opportunity…