“This isn‘t our sort of thing, you know”, was the remarkable response by Glyndebourne’s founder John Christie to Benjamin Britten’s second chamber opera at its premiere in 1947. No less…
Category: Staged Operas
The Trees are Alive with the Sound of Music in Glyndebourne’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Glyndebourne’s programming of Britten’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for its autumn season might seem somewhat eccentric. But with summer now a fading memory and as October wears on,…
Forthright musical ebullience makes up for an uninspiring production of Handel’s Giustino
The Royal Opera House continues its series of Handel’s operas and oratorios premiered at the theatre which once stood on the same site with Giustino (1737). Coming from the end…
Welsh National Opera’s Frothy Candide Showcases Its Pythonesque Humour
Welsh National Opera’s Candide has returned as part of its autumn season and, due to stringent Arts Council cuts, it’s one of only two productions, neither of which are new.…
Shocking Twist On A Biblical Tale: INseries’ St John the Baptist
Premiered in 1675 as a concert work, until now, Alessandro Stradella’s San Giovanni Battista has never been staged. Cue INseries, always striving to do something new and daring, starting their…
Dead Man Walking in San Francisco
Though one may chafe at the dramatic and musical naïveté of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, you will admit that it packs a wallop. A man is summarily murdered in…
Rigoletto in San Francisco
San Francisco’s 1932 War Memorial Opera House (honoring the city’s WWI dead soldiers) is among the world’s more lavish examples of theater architecture, surpassed, in my experience, only by the…
He Who Laughs Last, Lasts Longest: Salieri’s La locandiera
For those familiar with Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus film, it was Salieri who had the last laugh. He outlived Mozart by 34 years, not dying until 1825, so this year marks…
The Royal Opera House Takes a Critical Look at Tosca’s Roman Setting in Oliver Mears’s Stimulating New Production
After the ‘shabby little shocker’ that was Oliver Mears’s production of Semele, seen at the Royal Opera House just two months ago, he now turns his attention to the opera that…
At the Intersection of Circus and Opera: Campra’s Le Carnaval de Venise at La Vache Baroque
First performed on January 20, 1699, André Campra’s comic opera/ballet to a libretto by Jean-François Regnard finally arrives at its UK premiere in late Summer 2025 at the Vache Baroque…