It was a South American mafia, Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez as the deceitful Count Ory, Venezuelan Diego Matheuz as conductor and Argentinian Hugo de Ana as metteur en scène.…
Rossini’s Otello at Pesaro’s Vitrifrigo Arena
Two high concept productions: Rossini’s Otello set in a kitchen with Rossini’s Le Comte Ory providing some eggs. More or less. For its large scale productions the Rossini Opera Festival…
Prom 43: Handel’s Solomon
Some of Handel’s oratorios aspire to theatre; some have had theatre thrust upon them. Solomon has neither sustained drama nor a coherent narrative, but it does have some fantastic music…
A sonically stirring ‘Song of the Earth’ from Le balcon and Maxime Pascal
Performances and recordings of Rainer Riehn’s 1983 chamber-ensemble arrangement of Mahler’s symphony-cum-song-cycle, Das Lied von der Erde, seem quite common these days – perhaps even more so than the original…
Turandot at the Arena di Verona
Spectacle is what the Arena di Verona does best, spectacle is what the late Franco Zefferelli did best, Turandot is an opera that lends itself to spectacle like no other.…
Prom 41: Superb Nielsen from Thomas Dausgaard and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra
“I think many people are in for pleasant surprises as they get to know Nielsen: his rough charm, his swing, his drive, his rhythmic surprises, his strange power of harmonic…
Falstaff: Santa Fe’s Belly Laughs
Santa Fe Opera welcomed Verdi’s Falstaff back to its world-renowned festival with a stylish new production marked by wit and effervescence. No company undertakes this piece without knowing they have…
The new Bayreuth Tristan und Isolde
This new production by Roland Schwab, conducted by Markus Poschner was given an ecstatic welcome by the acolytes of Wagner’s revered Festspielhaus. There were, in fact, occasional, very occasional moments…
Santa Fe Opera M. Butterfly: Part Papillon, Part Schmetterling
It is cause for celebration that Santa Fe Opera’s prestigious annual festival presented its 18th world premiere with composer Huang Ruo and librettist David Henry Hwang’s intriguing East-West fantasy, M.…
Colourise: a superb new disc by London Choral Sinfonia
In 1951, the English Opera Group commissioned a work from Lennox Berkeley, to be performed at the fifth Aldeburgh Festival the following year. That work, the Variations on a Hymn…