This concert realisation of Peer Gynt offered a powerful riposte to Debussy’s famously waspish comment on Grieg’s music: that it had the strange charm of a pink bonbon stuffed with…
Shaking it all up with English Touring Opera’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi
You can take the same basic idea with all its dramatic potential, but don’t ever expect it always to turn out successful, even though you adhere to the same basic…
Stéphane Fuget’s new recording of Lully Alceste from Versailles
Lully’s “tragédie lyrique en prologue et cinq actes” Alceste is set to a libretto by Philippe Quinault, after Euripides (Alcestis). The first performance took place at the Theâtre du Palais-Royal…
Charpentier from La Nuova Musica and Voktett Hannover at Wigmore Hall
Under the direction of Baroque specialist David Bates, La Nuova Musica joined forces with the German a capella ensemble Voktett Hannover to reveal two sides of French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier.…
Rusalka in Marseille
It was a fairly straight forward Rusalka, even though it took place at an on-stage Olympic style swimming pool, somewhere. Rusalka did kill the prince with a spear fishing gun,…
Das Rheingold in Paris
Any Calixto Bieito production is news, but it is great big news when he takes on the first installment of opera’s notorious four opera cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen. The…
I Puritani in Paris
Bellini’s tenth and last opera, I Puritani, took Paris by storm in 1835. Judging from the wild applause and standing ovation just now, it has lost none of its appeal…
Castor et Pollux in Paris
Just when you thought DEI (Diversity, Equality, Inclusion) was dead, American stage director Peter Sellers brazenly enlisted 16 highly trained (various cool, pop styles) dancers of color from America, France…
A simple, effective staging of a Thea Musgrave’s politically intricate opera Mary, Queen of Scots
Given the obsession with the Tudors – particularly as TV, stage or literary drama, as well as historical documentary – it makes for a welcome variation on this subject that…
Of loneliness, dragons and heroics: Wagner’s Siegfried in a staging by Regents Opera
Nobody should ever assume that creative artists constantly engage in mutual back-slapping. Tolstoy’s verdict on Wagner’s Siegfried, the second day of the Ring cycle, was vicious: “A stupid puppet show…