Diana Damrau, Jonas Kaufmann and Helmut Deutsch at the Barbican Hall

Good to see such a full hall for these two beloved singers with one of the finest collaborative pianists of them all.  This programme was a celebration of the lives…

Dido’s Ghost: music and myth, remembered and relived

If you’re a fan of postmodern magic realistic fiction – think Salman Rushdie, Italo Calvino, Gabriel García Márquez et al – then you’ll love Errollyn Wallen new opera Dido’s Ghost,…

Lully’s Phaeton at the Barbican, London

Jean-Baptiste Lully’s Phaeton is rarely heard live in Britain, so this performance with a superlative cast was a special occasion. It was part of the Barbican Hall’s continuing series of baroque, and particularly French baroque operas.

Joyce DiDonato: Drama Queens

Joyce DiDonato brought her Drama Queens tour to the Barbican Hall last night, 6 February 2012. Accompanied by Il Complesso Barocco, directed by Dmitry Sinkovsky, she enabled us to hear a wide range of arias by mainly Italian baroque composers from Monteverdi to Handel, by way of Porta, Cesti, Orlandini and Hasse.

Philip Glass: Einstein on the Beach, Barbican, London

Any performance of Philip Glass’ epic Einstein on the Beach (1976) is a major event. The work’s duration is around five hours and it is directed to be performed without interval (although see below — we had one).

Belshazzar’s Feast, London

The English Oratorio season at the Barbican Hall, London continued with Gerald Finley and two very different approaches to Belshazzar’s Feast — William Walton and Jean Sibelius.