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.…
Category: Staged Operas
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…
A magnificent Götterdämmerung at Longborough
With two Ring cycles completed some twenty years ago and another due next year, it’s not for nothing Longborough Festival Opera is known as the Bayreuth of the Cotswolds. All…
Rigoletto opens Opera Holland Park’s 2023 season
Director Cecilia Stinton sets out her stall in no uncertain terms during the overture to her new production of Verdi’s Rigoletto at Opera Holland Park. As conductor Lee Reynolds whips…
Style, imagination & not a little daring: a new staging of Handel’s Saul at Berlin’s Komische Oper
Over the Whitsun weekend, the Komische Oper in Berlin had something of a Handel festival on with revivals of Barrie Kosky’s production of Handel’s Semele and Stefan Herheim’s production of…
Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini at Deutsche Oper
Riccardo Zandonai’s reputation rests almost entirely on his 1914 opera Francesca da Rimini, a work that retains a toehold on the repertoire. A somewhat overblown romantic tragedy based on a…
Otello in Los Angeles
The revival of an architecturally kitsch, early twenty-first century production from Parma, Italy could not dim the luster of this finely wrought Otello. The Italian tragedy shone with exceptional, unusual…
Don Giovanni: a new production by Mariame Clément opens Glyndebourne Festival Opera 2023
When Donna Anna’s father rescues her from the sexual predator who has abused her, in the opening moments of Mariame Clément’s new production of Don Giovanni at Glyndebourne, he shoves…
Royal Academy Opera: Rossini’s La cambiale di matrimonio
This bright, bold and brisk production of Rossini’s La cambiale di matrimonio (The Marriage Contract) at the Royal Academy of Music confirmed one thing: that the 18-year-old Rossini knew what…