What is most striking about John Caird’s new production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo at Garsington Opera is the extent to which it reminds us that the humanist theories informing the aesthetic…
Category: Staged Operas
Hamlet at the Met
Today, with post-romanticism and minimalism in decline, most new operas fall into one of two categories. They are either “popularist” or “modernist.” Populist operas are crossover works. Building on Gershwin’s…
Missed chances and haunting memories: Eugene Onegin at Opera Holland Park
If the first night of Julia Burbach’s production of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin at Opera Holland Park marked the start of London’s summer opera season, it certainly didn’t mark the start…
A gripping Siegfried at Longborough Festival Opera
There’s something wholly satisfying when an opera is allowed to breathe its own magic without overworked directorial interference. This new production of Siegfried – originally planned for 2021 – forms…
Samson et Dalila at the Royal Opera House
To describe Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila as ‘old-fashioned’ doesn’t seem controversial. The French composer’s score harks back to the past with its allusions to Handelian fugue and Bachian chorale, betraying…
Ethel Smyth’s The Wreckers at Glyndebourne
It’s not often that a Glyndebourne production offers its audience an interactive experience. But, that’s what seemed to be happening towards the close of the final Act of the second…
A Baroque double-bill from Hampstead Garden Opera
The Cockpit Theatre in Marylebone is typical of the sort of intimate venue in which Hampstead Garden Opera customarily presents its productions, which showcase young singers and musicians in performances…
An irreverent but stylishly sung Imeneo at the Royal Academy of Music
Imeneo, Handel’s penultimate opera, has a somewhat chaotic history. It was the only one of Handel’s forty or so operas to be presented as an ‘operetta’ – perhaps to make…
Damiano Michieletto’s Don Pasquale returns to the Royal Opera House
In one sense, Donizetti’s Don Pasquale hinges on a slap. In a fit of pique, Norina lashes out at the eponymous wealthy, stubborn old man whom she’s duped, when he…
Lohengrin at the Royal Opera House
Considering the first night of David Alden’s (then) new production of Lohengrin in 2018, I found ‘a conceptual weakness at … [its] heart. I suspect it can be remedied: if…