Opera
igor.toronyilalic
Few singers provoke more debate than Rolando Villazón. His off-piste projects - from his Romantic exploration of the Baroque to his spell as a talent contest judge - have been much discussed over the years. By comparison, there's something strangely calm and conventional about Villazón's two latest projects: a new album of Verdi on Deutsche Grammophon and a performance of John Copley's La Bohème at the Royal Opera House. Yet you'd be foolish to ignore either. The celebrated Mexican tenor is the kind of singer who could make the Yellow Pages seem fresh. Theartsdesk caught Read more ...
David Nice
Much more regularly than the seven years it takes the Flying Dutchman's demon ship to reach dry land, the Zurich Opera steamer moors at the Southbank Centre. None of its more recent concert performances up to now has branded itself on the memory as much as its 2003 visit, when chorus and soloists stunned in Wagner's Tannhäuser. This one will, though: and the wonder of it is that Bryn Terfel's surely unsurpassable Dutchman, condemned to the seas for all eternity unless saved by the faithful-until-death love of a good woman, had other singers to match him.In the first act, the great Wagnerian Read more ...
David Nice
One of Russia’s greatest and most inspirational sopranos, Galina Vishnevskaya died on 11 December at the age of 86. To the world at large, she will probably be most famous for taking an heroic stand alongside her husband, cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, against the Soviet authorities over the treatment of Alexander Solzhenitsyn; in 1974, the couple were stripped of their citizenship as a result.Inside the Soviet Union up to that point she had long been the Bolshoi Opera’s prima donna assoluta, and though she went on to record some roles past her prime, there are peerless Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
My phone's predictive text posed an interesting question. Robert le Doable it insisted on calling last night's opera. And it's often been asked of this and other grands opéras. Are they doable? Such was the munificence of the times in which they thrived, and such has been the collapse in their popularity, are grands opéras worthy of resurrection? And do we have the resources and good will to do justice to their singular vision? If any opera company could meet the all-singing, all-dancing demands, it is the Royal Opera House. And if any of the hundreds of grands opéras that graced Read more ...
edward.seckerson
Lehár’s Merry Widow has been been spreading enchantment across the globe for well over a century. She’s the vintage champagne of operettas, and the prospect of John Wilson popping her cork was more than a little enticing. Wilson, one feels, instinctively knows how this music goes and indeed did so before even the composer put the notes on the page. He was surely born into the wrong century. So why do I feel a "but" coming on? Why did this particular magnum of bubbly not go to my head?First the positives. Presenting the Widow in concert has to be about the numbers; the dialogue - a problem at Read more ...
Ismene Brown
So Tony Hall moves from heading the Royal Opera House to taking over the BBC as its new Director-General. I can't for a moment imagine a rerun of that crucial mini-conversation between Helen Boaden and George Entwistle over the Jimmy Savile programming (if you can remember all the way back to mid-October through the cannonfire since) taking anything like a similar course had it been Tony Hall rather than Entwistle.Entwistle prided himself, even congratulated himself on not asking a single question about why Newsnight's investigation into Savile should have any relevance to his programming of Read more ...
Kimon Daltas
We had already been reassured in interviews that Calixto Bieito’s production of Carmen would not be shocking, although perhaps this was more a warning to those of us hoping that it might be. Bieito’s radical reputation is well earned, although approaching 50 he is by no means an enfant and clearly not so terrible anymore either.The first scene opens with a soldier wearing nothing but Y-fronts and boots, holding a rifle and running round the stage, presumably as a punishment handed out by Corporal Moralès or Lieutenant Zuniga. In fact, there are bits and bobs of undressing at various stages of Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
You can tell a lot about a performance of L’elisir d’amore from the two pizzicato string chords that so neatly take the sheen off the military pomp of the opening phrase. Played well, these subversive little asides can throb with all the wit and cheeky self-mockery that elevates this opera above the hundreds of Donizetti also-rans. Played earnestly, as they were last night however, they heralded a rather limp performance – laboriously correct without ever finding (let alone seizing) that anarchic glee that riots through the score.Laurent Pelly’s production returns to the Royal Opera House for Read more ...
Richard Scott
Clearly rents in 2010 were substantially cheaper than I remember because somehow Rodolfo and Marcello have managed to find a garret in Soho of all places. And it would be easy to continue my review in this vein, poking the odd hole in OperaUpClose’s updating of La Bohème, including mentioning my temptation to shout out, “Pawn your laptop for some Covonia, mate, your girlfriend’s got a right cough on her!” But none of those quibbles were really the point of this production. While we did begin in a lacklustre set of IKEA furniture, with some shy, awkward lad acting from the quartet of Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
John Bunyan’s Christian, hero of The Pilgrim’s Progress, may have been putting his feet up in the Celestial City for the better part of 350 years, but for Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Pilgrim it has been a rather different story. Languishing in the Slough of Despond after an unsuccessful first run at the Royal Opera in the 1950s, the composer’s lavish “Morality” The Pilgrim’s Progress, with its patchwork biblical libretto, vast forces and uniquely blended combination of opera and oratorio, has never since established a secure place in the repertoire.A new production at English National Opera – Read more ...
Richard Scott
At the heart of Julian Philips’ chamber opera The Yellow Sofa stands, perhaps unsurprisingly, a beautiful antique yellow chaise longue that bears witness to all the adultery, money grabbing and revenge that a 1880s Lisbon household has to offer; but Philips’ sofa is far from mute, she is portrayed here by the exceptional Lauren Easton who sings an extraordinary mix of opera and fado as she narrates, in a sultry yet haughty fashion, all the steamy goings on. To my mind Easton achieves something very rare in opera, a believable fusion of singing styles that not only casts the audience mind Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
“Last night’s tenor was superb, wasn’t he? Such Italianate passion at the top of his range…” In the pub, the streets and – in this case – over the cereal and croissants of a hotel breakfast, there’s only one topic of conversation in Wexford for 10 days every autumn: opera. During festival time this tiny Irish town on the river Slaney undergoes something of a sea-change. Doctors, plumbers and shop-assistants all transform themselves into the festival staff, ushering audiences, erecting staging and assisting artists.It all makes for an atmosphere of excitement, further fuelled by the festival’s Read more ...