History according to opera is a wondrous thing. Just now in San Francisco Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera have gone off into the sunset (eternity) together, happily reconciled. All this…
Category: Staged Operas
Così fan tutte at The Grange
To Hampshire and The Grange for the second of what should for me be three productions of Così fan tutte this summer. I cannot yet comment on Munich (Benedict Andrews/Vladimir…
Die Frau ohne Schatten in San Francisco
The fifth opera of the lengthy Richard Strauss canon, The Woman Without a Shadow (1915) is surely the richest work of them all, traversing real and imaginary worlds while proving…
Tosca at Grange Park Opera
I didn’t see Peter Relton’s production of Tosca for Grange Park Opera when it inaugurated the company’s new Theatre in the Woods at West Horsley in 2017, so it was…
A double bill of Gluck and Purcell which dances, ducks and dives at The Grange Festival
Reviewing Daniel Slater’s production of Handel’s Tamerlano at The Grange Festival last year, I remarked that there was ‘so little directorial intervention that what few such gestures there are stick…
Saariaho’s Adriana Mater in San Francisco
June in San Francisco may become one of the world’s great opera festivals. In recent years the San Francisco Symphony has added a staged opera in its concert hall to…
Madama Butterfly in San Francisco
Japanese stage director Amon Miyamoto’s Madama Butterfly was first seen in Tokyo, then traveled to Dresden before arriving just now in San Francisco. Unlike Puccini who made the tiny Japanese…
An underwhelming Il trovatore at the Royal Opera House
There are those productions that linger in the memory for months, even years. Then there are those that fade all too quickly from consciousness, consigned to history and best forgotten.…
A superb cast make Tim Albery’s enigmatic Mitridate at Garsington compelling
Mozart had already got three operas under his belt – as well as numerous oratorios and masses, symphonies and sonatas – when the fourteen-year-old prodigy was commissioned to compose an…
A stylish, sunny Il barbiere di Siviglia at Garsington
Simon Higlett’s stylish designs handsomely set the scene for Christopher Luscombe’s new production of Il barbiere di Siviglia at Garsington, transporting us to the narrow, cobbled streets of that Spanish…