Opera
charlotte.gardner
Vignette Productions is a bit of a one-off in the operatic world. It was established three years ago by the rising young British tenor Andrew Staples, his mission to create operas that were more exciting and told better stories than those generally on offer. Staples directs rather than sings; his casts are made up of young unknown singers, and the productions to date certainly fulfil the original aim. Last year, their summer production of Cosi fan tutte had the audience sitting in deckchairs atop of six tons of sand and ended with a beach party. With that in mind, a bit of youthful wackiness Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Longborough has its Mozart (this season a not wildly exciting Così fan tutte), and it has its Verdi (this year Falstaff). But its real heart is in Wagner, and in particular The Ring, now – in its third year – up to Siegfried. Wagnerites infest the car parks and the picnic lawns. The man who borrowed our corkscrew at supper time had seen six operas in one week at Bayreuth, and on his one night off had gone to Munich to see Rienzi, the longest Wagner night of the lot. Longborough is decidedly his kind of place.Removing one’s rose-tinted specs, it’s easy enough to find fault with this or that Read more ...
philip radcliffe
An opera a day keeps boredom at bay. There’s no danger of boredom in Buxton in mid-July. Set 1,000ft up in the Derbyshire hills, on the edge of the Peak District, and blessed with an Edwardian gem of an opera house, the old spa town is now well established with its own place on the festival map. And when the sun shines on it, as it did for most of the first day, it’s a picture.The Buxton Festival aims to keep you going from breakfast to bedtime (late) with nine operas, a programme of high-class music, a strong literary series bringing 30 well-known authors to flog their books, a touch of Read more ...
philip radcliffe
The Hallé Orchestra, enlarged for the occasion with harps, anvils, horns and such, was in its place on the platform. Sir Mark Elder made his entrance like a surgeon about to embark on a complex and energy-draining heart bypass operation. And the lights went out. On purpose. A spotlight picked up a man in a white shirt with long hair mounting the platform and making his way to a small table, chair and reading lamp mid-stage. It was Richard Wagner – in the form of actor Roger Allam. Pure melodrama.Allam started to mutter, speak, declaim in that rich booming voice of his, articulating the Read more ...
igor.toronyilalic
Rossini's William Tell has to be the most well-known unknown opera ever written. There's unlikely to be a man, woman or dog on the planet who can't whistle or bark a part of the overture. But the other four hours? What of that? One opera aficionado told me that the last time he'd heard the whole thing live, Winston Churchill was still in Number 10. Prommers were being given their first chance last night. It was hard not to come to it with trepidation. Because operas are like people; they aren't usually left on the shelf for this long for no reason. Of course, there is a reason. A simple Read more ...
stephen.walsh
“These premises have 24-hour security surveillance,” reads one of the notices on the wall as we audience traipsed round the outside of Cardiff’s Coal Exchange between stages of this mobile production of Stephen Deazley’s new opera about people who can’t sleep. It turned out to be the only poster that had nothing to do with the performance, in among the “Nobody Sleeps” signs, the “Keep Awake”s, the “No Beds” (or whatever: “Nessun dorma” I didn’t see or hear, but might have done; it would have been thematic and does in fact crop up in the libretto).Personally, I’m one of (I hope) billions for Read more ...
David Nice
Sweetheart American mezzo Joyce DiDonato stayed firmly behind the proscenium arch for yesterday evening's Royal Opera performance of Massenet's Cendrillon - reviewed by theartsdesk on its opening night - but another Covent Garden regular, former ballerina and non-irritant presenter Deborah Bull, was soon schmoozing the crowds in Trafalgar Square, assembled to watch the fairytale unfold in real time beneath Nelson's Column. It was a big occasion for the long-deceased composer, who having enjoyed short-lived fame went into near eclipse except for Werther and Manon over the next century but last Read more ...
Ismene Brown
The Yorkshire aphorism, "There's nowt so queer as folks", might have been coined to describe the row. The alteration of a single word in a community opera wracked by furore over claimed homophobia has saved it from being banned. Opera North has announced that Beached, a project with children written by Lee Hall (writer of Billy Elliot), will go ahead next week after all.As was reported on theartsdesk earlier this week, outrage blew up over a single rhyming couplet for a gay character in the opera. The replacement of the word "queer", after days of fuss involving campaigns over artistic Read more ...
David Nice
Robin the boy wonder, as he was somewhat patronisingly dubbed during his prodigious rise to conducting stardom, will make a bracing Batman for Glyndebourne Festival Opera when he takes over from current music director Vladimir Jurowski in January 2014.There's no doubt, I think, in anyone's mind down there in Sussex or indeed in the music world at large that he's the right man for the job. He learnt his craft with Glyndebourne on Tour (GOT) starting as assistant conductor on Mozart's Die Zauberflöte in 2004 and going on to be its music director from 2007-9 - an era culminating in a Read more ...
David Nice
After a heap of ashen revivals, it was time for the Royal Opera to take us to the ball in style. Which it does, for the most part. Of course, Massenet's "fairytale after Perrault" isn't Aida, Butterfly, Fidelio, Macbeth orTosca, all of which have deserved better from the house. Though spun out at less than heavenly length and, sometimes, so much per yard, it does have the composer's special brands of discreet charm and gentle humour, especially well served by two world-class voices out of the four leads. And director Laurent Pelly knows how to scintillate in all but one of this small diamond' Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
With opera houses in Britain now ringing to the four-letter cries of Anna Nicole and Two Boys (not to mention the rather more elderly, but no less explicit utterances of Le grand macabre) verbal taboos it seems are a thing of the past. Yet one word remains tainted, perpetually and immutably filthy, never to be voiced in polite cultural company: operetta. Whether or not Puccini’s La rondine actually falls into this genre is debatable, but like the heroine at its heart we shouldn’t allow this silken embrace of a work to be tarnished by a label, however obscene.If you were seized unawares by the Read more ...
David Nice
The kerfuffle over the collapse of a community opera, Beached, to a libretto by Billy Elliot writer Lee Hall with music by Harvey Brough, seems to have gone international. In short, the main school in the Bridlington area fielding 300 participants withdrew when Hall refused to change the lines (sung by an adult in the piece): "Of course I'm queer/ That's why I left here/ So if you infer/ That I prefer/ A lad to a lass/ And I'm working class/ I'd have to concur".It is understandable that the show could no longer go on with only two weeks left. Essentially Opera North, organisers of the Read more ...