“Siegfried is the Man of the Future, the man we wish, the man we will, but cannot make, and the man who must create himself through our annihilation.” This was Richard Wagner, writing in 1854, his thoughts on Siegfried. The hero of Wagner’s Siegfried, however, has quite some journey to travel before he gets to the vision the composer described in that letter to August Roeckel. Watching Torsten Kerl’s Siegfried in this – largely magnificent – concert performance one really wondered how tortuous a journey this would be.
I Capuleti e i Montecchi in Rome
Shakespearean sentiments may gracefully enrich Gounod’s Romeo et Juliet, but powerful Baroque tensions enthrall us in the bel canto complexities of Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Conductor Daniele Gatti’s offered a truly fine bel canto evening at Rome’s Teatro dell’Opera introducing a trio of fine young artists.
Santtu-Matias Rouvali makes versatile debut with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra
Finnish conductor Santtu-Matias Rouvali has been making waves internationally for some time. The chief conductor of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra is set to take over from Esa-Pekka Salonen as principal conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra in 2021.
Tristan und Isolde in Bologna
East German stage director Ralf Pleger promised us a Tristan unlike anything we had ever seen. It was indeed. And Slovakian conductor Jura Val?uha gave us a Tristan as never before heard. All of this just now in the most Wagnerian of all Italian cities — Bologna!?
Seductively morbid – The Fall of the House of Usher in The Hague
What does it feel like to be depressed? “It’s like water seeping into my heart” is how one young sufferer put it.
Daring Pairing Doubles the Fun by Pacific Opera Project
Puccini’s only comedy, the one act Gianni Schicchi is most often programmed with a second short piece of tragic fare, but the adventurous Pacific Opera Project has banked on a fanciful Ravel opus to sustain the mood and send the audience home with tickled ribs and gladdened hearts.
Bieito’s Carmen returns to English National Opera
‘Men Behaving Badly’ wouldn’t be a bad subtitle for Calixto Bieito’s production of Carmen, currently being revived at ENO.
Twilight People: Andreas Scholl and Tamar Halperin at Wigmore Hall
Twilight people: existing betwixt and between states, slipping the bounds of categorisation, on the edge of the norm.
A French Affair: La Nuova Musica at Wigmore Hall
A French Affair, as this programme was called, was a promising concept on paper, but despite handsomely sung contributions from the featured soloists and much energetic direction from David Bates, it never quite translated into a wholly satisfying evening’s performance.
Coquettes, Wives, and Widows: Gender Politics in French Baroque Opera and Theater
A revelatory study of how composers and dramatists of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France criticized and trivialized independent women in their portrayals of them in works of theater and opera.