First unveiled at Glyndebourne in May (review), Paul Higgins’s revival of Don Giovanni leaves Mariame Clément’s interpretation largely untouched, yet questions about her staging and its ambiguities remain unexplained. Most…
Category: Staged Operas
Omar in San Francisco
The black man Omar Ibn Said was forcibly brought from sub-Saharan Africa to South Carolina in 1807. He was sold, becoming an indentured person for life (d. 1863). Omar the…
Handel’s Jephtha at the Royal Opera House
Voices cut through the darkness, chanting in prayer. A candle flickers centre-stage. These are potent symbols of the fundamentalism and fire that drive Handel’s Jephtha and of the battle between…
Annabel Arden’s L’elisir d’amore brings autumn sunshine to Glyndebourne
The first day of what would have been Glyndebourne’s 2023 Autumn Tour, had not Arts Council England swung its financial axe, was as sunny and bright as the score which…
Zoraida in Wexford: Forgotten But Not Gone
It was a big leap today from the effervescent afternoon performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s acclaimed comic delight, The Daughter of the Regiment, to the somber evening show of the same…
Afternoon Laughs in Wexford
If the Wexford Festival’s evening fare in their Women & War themed season is deadly serious, the afternoon offerings were chockful of amusing confections that are more fun than a…
Wexford Festival’s Stunning Two Women
When you enter the auditorium for the performance of Mark Tutino, Fabio Ceresa and Luca Rossi’s La ciociara (Two Women), the darkened stage is fronted on the far left apron…
Red Dawn Rises Again in Wexford
The venerable Wexford Festival’s M.O. is rehabilitating forgotten operas from the past, and few are further beyond recollection than Camille Erlanger’s competent potboiler, L’Aube rouge (The Red Dawn). The libretto…
Lohengrin in San Francisco
This is the excellent David Alden 2018 production from Covent Garden. Here is how it fared at the War Memorial Opera House. It fit like a glove due to strong…
A hard and heartless Rigoletto at the Royal Opera House
One of my opera-loving friends, a singer and musician herself and a regular devotee of both opera and ballet at the Royal Opera House and elsewhere, never attends performances of…