A John Adams premiere is about the biggest news event the opera world can generate. Here’s the news from San Francisco. Anthony and Cleopatra is the first opera John Adams…
Category: Staged Operas
Welsh National Opera’s The Makropulos Affair: a magnificent achievement
The question of why we should crave immortality is central to Janáček’s penultimate opera. As a composer he defied old bones and enjoyed an Indian summer, finding recognition during his…
Haute-couture opera with an industrial vibe: Costanzo, Handel and Glass at London’s Printworks
If one places in context where this program of Handel and Glass took place – the old and the contemporary – its historic setting seemed to have a real sense…
The Unravelling Fantasia of Miss H: a powerful operatic tribute to Mary Frances Heaton
She stood up one Sunday in St George’s church, the parish church of Doncaster, and interrupted the sermon, accusing the preacher of being “a whited sepulchre, a thief, a villain,…
The Trocs go to the opera? Vinci’s Alessandro nell’Indie with five countertenors at Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival
This was a brilliantly theatrical and superbly sung recreation of an opera reflecting the work’s premiere by an all-male cast. Max Emanuel Cencic’s Bayreuth Baroque Opera Festival takes place in…
A Handelian capriccio from Bampton Classical Opera at the Barn at Old Walland
Georg Frideric Handel and Richard Strauss may make unlikely bedfellows, but for this inaugural performance at the Barn at Old Walland, in Wadhurst, Sussex, Bampton Classical Opera wittily presented Handel’s…
Sir John in Love: Vaughan Williams’ opera is presented with wit, charm and affection by British Youth Opera
Of Shakespeare’s characters, only Sir John Falstaff has inspired so many operas. Alongside accounts of his amorous adventures by Salieri, Nicolai, Balfe, Verdi and Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams’ four-act comedy,…
Le Comte Ory at the Rossini Opera Festival
It was a South American mafia, Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez as the deceitful Count Ory, Venezuelan Diego Matheuz as conductor and Argentinian Hugo de Ana as metteur en scène.…
Rossini’s Otello at Pesaro’s Vitrifrigo Arena
Two high concept productions: Rossini’s Otello set in a kitchen with Rossini’s Le Comte Ory providing some eggs. More or less. For its large scale productions the Rossini Opera Festival…