Reviews

05 Oct 2020

ETO Autumn 2020 Season Announcement: Lyric Solitude

English Touring Opera are delighted to announce a season of lyric monodramas to tour nationally from October to December. The season features music for solo singer and piano by Argento, Britten, Tippett and Shostakovich with a bold and inventive approach to making opera during social distancing. »

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15 Jun 2011

Israel Opera cuts wide swath at festival

Israel Opera’s summer festival grew astonishingly in the year following its 2010 inaugural season.  »

14 Jun 2011

Simon Boccanegra, ENO

It would seem that in his preparations for this new production of Simon Boccanegra, the acclaimed Russian director, Dmitri Tcherniakov, has been familiarising himself Jonathan Miller’s previous ENO efforts.  »

14 Jun 2011

L’amico Fritz, London

Think verismo and one imagines melodramatic, often violent plots which peer unflinchingly into the soul of every character.  »

12 Jun 2011

Tosca, Covent Garden

The current Tosca at the Royal Opera House is something of a classic, revived four times in five years. It’s now being filmed for cinema to be released in November 2011. »

09 Jun 2011

Karlsruhe “Gioconda” Unintentionally ‘Konzertant’

It was a lucky happenstance that glorious vocalism characterized Badisches Staatstheater’s La Gioconda, for effective stagecraft was nowhere in evidence…but, oh, what singing!  »

09 Jun 2011

Andreas Scholl, Wigmore Hall

A capacity crowd at the Wigmore Hall eagerly awaited the arrival of Andreas Scholl and Tamar Halperin on the platform on Tuesday evening.  »

07 Jun 2011

Candide, Barbican Centre

‘Glitter and be gay!’ cries Cunegonde, determined to overcome the bitter circumstances in which she finds herself in sordid, downturn Paris. »

06 Jun 2011

Phaedra in Philadelphia

The U.S. premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s Phaedra at the Opera Company of Philadelphia may well be the most important and ambitious new work presented by any American company this season. »

03 Jun 2011

The Metropolitan Opera HD Live on DVD

Since 2006, movie cineplexes across the USA have attracted a somewhat unlikely crowd for Saturday matinees, from fall to spring.  »

01 Jun 2011

Brahms Liebesliederwalzer, Wigmore Hall, London

Any performance of Brahms and Schumann four part songs is an occasion.  »

31 May 2011

Bach Cantatas, volume 11

Pilgrimages, I suspect, derive a degree of their fruitfulness from the slowness of the journey, a pace born of desire or necessity, that removes the journey from the quotidian, brings the purpose into greater focus, and allows for a richer savoring of the experience. »

31 May 2011

Le Royaume Oublié: La Tragédie Cathare

Before a single track has been heard, Jordi Savall’s The Forgotten Kingdom impresses with its scale: a three-CD set packaged in a lavish, bound book that contains fifty dense pages of English commentary by nine different authors; adding the multiple translations, beautiful illustrations, and song texts, the book itself luxuriantly sprawls over 500 pages. »

30 May 2011

Ian Bostridge, Wigmore Hall

“Music, music for a while/ Shall all your cares beguile,” vowed Ian Bostridge at the opening of this recital with his regular accompanist, Julius Drake.  »

30 May 2011

Les Noces de Figaro in Paris

This is the one by Giorgio Strehler that opened at Versailles in 1973 and since has endured twenty-three incarnations, first at the Garnier and later at the Bastille.  »

27 May 2011

James Bowman, The Last London Recital

It’s easy to slip into platitudes when eulogising the last London recital performance of a singer commonly lauded as the outstanding countertenor of his generation.  »

26 May 2011

I Compagnacci and Il Re, Teatro Grattacielo

Teatro Grattacielo gives concert performances of Verismo operas that range from the obscure to the unheard-of.  »

26 May 2011

Macbeth, Royal Opera

Phyllida Lloyd’s reading of Verdi’s Macbeth – first seen in 2002 and here revived for the second time – could certainly not be described as ‘subtle’, either dramatically or visually. »

24 May 2011

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Glyndebourne

Glorious sunshine for Glyndebourne Opera’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg on the eve of Richard Wagner's birthday. »

23 May 2011

Richard Coeur-de-Lion, New York

André-Modeste Grétry, the greatest opera composer ever to come from Belgium, made his way to Paris in 1767 at the age of 26.  »

23 May 2011

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, ENO

On my travels, I often hear occasional opera-goers complain about having wasted time and money on a production that, on the night, bears no relation to their expectations.  »

22 May 2011

Opera Remade, 1700-1750

This substantial book is one of the latest in the Ashgate series of collected essays in opera studies and draws together articles from a disparate group of scholarly journals and collected volumes, some recent, some now difficult to locate.  »

22 May 2011

Iphigénie en Tauride at the Washington National Opera

The Washington National Opera has concluded its 2010-11 season with Gluck’s 1779 masterpiece Iphigénie en Tauride, arguably the great Viennese composer’s greatest achievement and his swan song (if one does not count that unfortunate flop of 1780, Echo et Narcisse — and luckily, one hardly ever does).  »

22 May 2011

James MacMillan’s Clemency, Royal Opera

James MacMillan has reunited with his librettist, the poet Michael Symmons Roberts, to produce his new opera Clemency.  »

21 May 2011

Don Giovanni, Florida Grand Opera

By Leporello’s count (in the “Catalogue aria”), Don Giovanni tallies over 2,000 sexual exploits. »

21 May 2011

Benvenuto Cellini

Philipp Stölzl’s production of Benvenuto Cellini, from the 2007 Salzburg Festival, is weird almost beyond belief.  »

20 May 2011

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf in Der Rosenkavalier

Classic films often receive the honor of a full “restoration,” especially when a new viewing format appears. »

20 May 2011

John Adams: Nixon in China

A quarter century having passed since its premiere, Nixon in China appears to have secured a niche in the opera repertoire, at least of American opera houses.  »

18 May 2011

Orfeo ed Euridice, Metropolitan Opera

Gluck’s Orfeo is, intentionally, free of clutter. If you cut out the scenes of balletic rejoicing just before the finale (and I can’t think of any good reason not to do so), it’s less than ninety minutes of music.  »

18 May 2011

Die Walküre, Metropolitan Opera

There’s a lot to be said for lowered expectations. After last fall’s cramped, over-busy staging of Das Rheingold, I was prepared for a rough night at Die Walküre—and enjoyed the occasion very much, the staging, the direction, most of the singing, even the costumes.  »

09 May 2011

Houston makes sense — and music — of Ariadne

Ariadne auf Naxos, the next major endeavor of the Richard Strauss/Hugo von Hofmannsthal collaboration after Der Rosenkavalier in 1911, has been a special challenge for American opera companies. »

09 May 2011

The Damnation of Faust, ENO

Terry Gilliam was one of the forces behind Monty Python, the popular British TV comedy of the 1970’s. His fans will flock in droves to his version of Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust at the ENO, London.  »

29 Apr 2011

Anne Sofie von Otter, Wigmore Hall

For the second time in a matter of just a few weeks, the Wigmore Hall audience were treated to an evening of seventeenth-century song and dance. »

29 Apr 2011

Rigoletto, New York

Rigoletto is the perfect opera. Even Verdi, who wrote so many wonderful scores, never created anything more flawless.  »

29 Apr 2011

Séance on a Wet Afternoon

Saturday, April 23 was indeed a rainy afternoon in New York City.  »

24 Apr 2011

Sumeida’s Song

It has long been my belief that the problems of the planet would be resolved (or move on to their next stage) if only the folk of every ethnicity (nation, faith, historic minority, tribe) would devote their energy to creating opera—and perhaps theater or dance—out of its musical and mythical traditions.  »

22 Apr 2011

The Magic Flute, Manitoba

It’s hard to go wrong with The Magic Flute. Mozart’s final opera contains every audience-pleasing feature in spades: beautiful music, a fairy tale story, romance, laughter, villains, heroes/heroines, and for most — a happy ending. »

22 Apr 2011

Minnesota Opera rescues Herrmann work

There’s more Byron than Brontë in Bernard Herrmann’s 1951 Wuthering Heights.  »

22 Apr 2011

Otello, Carnegie Hall

By the time he emerged from retirement with Otello, his twenty-seventh opera, at 73, there wasn’t much Giuseppe Verdi didn’t know about how to make an orchestra do his bidding, set the mood of each line of a good story, piling excitement on excitement and letting the tension mutate to something gentler at the right times in order to make the outburst to follow the more demoniac.  »

22 Apr 2011

Cyrano, Florida Grand Opera

To enter into David DiChiera’s space as he talks opera shop is to risk being pulled into his world, rapt by a tractor beam emitting a constant flow of music theater load.  »

22 Apr 2011

A Dinner Engagement

Trust Winnipeg’s resourceful Little Opera Company to come up with a little known, yet charmingly entertaining spring production.  »

19 Apr 2011

Handel’s Hercules when the Music is Paramount

In Lyric Opera of Chicago’s new production of Handel’s Hercules there is an undeniable interpretive strategy which prompts the viewer to consider recurring elements of human emotion, e.g. jealousy, rage, pity, among others.  »

19 Apr 2011

Americans define new territory for songs

They all wrote songs — lots of them: Ives, Bernstein, Rorem. In recital, however, the American product has never found a place on the perch claimed by Schubert and Schumann.  »

19 Apr 2011

Ian Bostridge, Wigmore Hall

The most remarkable aspects of this fresh, illuminating performance of Schubert’s Winterreise by Ian Bostridge and Mitsuko Uchida were the masterly control of dramatic form and the insightful, quite original, shaping of emotional content. »

19 Apr 2011

Akhmatova in Paris

The very name Mantovani strikes musical terror in the hearts of high minded Americans and Brits of a certain age. Now the same surname is evidently terrorizing Parisians. »

18 Apr 2011

The Tsar’s Bride, Royal Opera House

In Russian-speaking countries, Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Tsar’s Bride is much loved. In the west, it’s known mainly for its Overture. The Royal Opera House’s production is the first major production of the full opera in Britain. »

14 Apr 2011

Katarina Karnéus, Wigmore Hall

In Britain, Katarina Karnéus is closely associated with Grieg and Sibelius. Indeed, her career has almost been defined by her recordings of their songs for Hyperion. »

13 Apr 2011

Dallas Boris a monument to Tarkovsky

In those dark days before VCR and DVD, knowledgeable film buffs craved the return of Solaris and Stalker to a local art house screen. »

13 Apr 2011

Christopher Maltman, Wigmore Hall

A Frenchman, three Germans and a Venezuelan-born French national: musical responses to Venice.  »

08 Apr 2011

Tosca, NI Opera

“Show goes on despite fresh bomb scare”. Not exactly the sort of headline a new opera company might have dreamt of for its inaugural production. »

06 Apr 2011

Capriccio, Metropolitan Opera

Richard Strauss, nearly eighty years old and past caring what anybody thought (Pauline aside), ignored the Second World War happening just down the street and collaborated with his longtime conductor Clemens Krauss in an arch libretto about the feud for primacy between poetry and music, concluding with their synthesis in opera.  »

04 Apr 2011

Monodramas, NYCO

New York City Opera’s evening of “Monodramas” (under that general title) may not appeal to the opera-goer who prefers such typical fare as the company’s other offering this week, Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’amore, but I found it a devilish and delightful exploration of the depths of inner consciousness. »

04 Apr 2011

L’Elisir d’Amore

Donizetti described to his father the premiere cast of L’Elisir in terms of lukewarm praise—the tenor only “passable” the soprano’s voice “pretty” and the bass “a little hammy.”  »

04 Apr 2011

Lawrence Zazzo, Wigmore Hall

In this intriguing and unpredictable recital, American countertenor, Lawrence Zazzo, and his accompanist, Simon Lepper, presented a dynamic sequence of American song from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  »