The fifth revival of Jonathan Miller’s well worn-in production of Bohéme has brought with it a number of revelations. On the first night (February 3), it was the conducting of…
Category: Staged Operas
Seattle Opera’s Orfeo ed Euridice: Small and near perfect
During the entire epidemic, Seattle Opera continued to create, primarily through videos showing it in survival mode: a monochrome, monaural reduction of Don Giovanni; Jonathan Dove’s “airport opera” Flight lip-synced…
La Valkyrie in Marseille
Omicron roared through Marseille, civil authorities refused its opera house orchestra entry into the dangerously close confines of its pit. But sitting comfortably distanced on stage itself, this under appreciated…
Tosca returns to Covent Garden
Oh, what a difference a couple of months makes – Tosca returns to the Royal Opera, same production (the long-running Jonathna Kent) but with a new cast and conductor. December…
La bohème returns to ENO
This was, I think, the fourth time I have seen Jonathan Miller’s production of La bohème. It strikes me, in this revival directed by Crispin Lord, to have a good…
Tim Albery’s new production of Alcina for Opera North
Handel was rather fond of enchantresses; they pop up in his operas both early and late. It wasn’t the power per se that seems to have interested him but the…
Bravura and brutality: Irish National Opera bring Vivaldi’s Bajazet to the Royal Opera House
In this age of copyright, the pasticcio – in which pre-existing arias by various composers are assembled to make a ‘new’ work – is a somewhat discredited form, generally regarded…
Opera North’s Rigoletto
Ostensibly, Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse satirised the licentious court of King Francis I of France, but at the play’s 1832 premiere in Paris the authorities thought the subject…
Handel’s Theodora at the Royal Opera House
Theodora is ‘coming home’ … but not as you know it, was the essential message of the press briefings issued by the Royal Opera House in the run up to…
Les Vêpres Siciliennes in Palermo
Ossia I Vespri Siciliani takes its name from the evening prayer to which the faithful are called by the ringing of bells. Specifically the bells of Verdi’s Sicilian vespers signal…