Opera
David Nice
It may be only six and a half months since many of us saw a production of Beethoven’s Fidelio in the opera house, but that was another world, and this post-lockdown admittance to Garsington Opera’s spacious, award-winning pavilion with its impressive acoustic was always going to be something extraordinary. It turned out to be all the more so given the revelations of what you can hear in Beethoven’s score as arranged by Francis Griffin for an ensemble of 13 Philharmonia players – as conductor Douglas Boyd pointed out, not better than the original, but startlingly different – and the Read more ...
David Nice
One source of advance information told us to expect a reduced version of Bartók’s one-act Bluebeard’s Castle, among the 20th century’s most original and profound operatic masterpieces. Joining 19 other lucky invitees and some of the LSO brass upstairs at St Luke’s, I realized immediately that the sea of comfortably distanced musicians covering the entire floor space, from violins at the east end in front of a conferring Simon Rattle, Karen Cargill and Gerald Finley, to percussion below us at the west, could only mean the real, full thing: the largest gathering of players I’d seen in London Read more ...
Christopher Lambton
Picture the scene. A vast steel gazebo covers a nondescript parking lot next to an industrial unit in Glasgow. With a clear plastic covering, it is the most rudimentary of shelters, sides open to admit the roar of the M8 and the wailing of sirens, carried on a keen autumnal breeze. About 100 people, all wearing masks, are seated at a random scattering of mismatched but carefully distanced chairs and tables, loosely grouped around a central stage. Around the perimeter, a scattering of tents, shipping containers, and flatbed lorry trailers, one of which is furnished to look like a dilapidated Read more ...
David Nice
What could be better than Mozart’s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro to celebrate the Royal Opera’s next step on the path out of lockdown? Ideally, the rest of the opera, especially remembering Antonio Pappano’s lively interaction with his singers playing the continuo role. But the unavoidably touchy-feely action, even in a semi-staged performance, still can’t be realized, so what we got on Friday night was a starry(ish) gala instead – always a tricky act to sustain.First, the real cause for celebration: the full Royal Opera Orchestra filling the stalls area and the Chorus in the boxes and Read more ...
David Nice
In seach of Orpheus, and following a route from the Hades of (thankfully) masked beings on the underground to Archway, then up to a windy, grassy plateau just below Highgate village, this wandering critic encountered another myth about the power of life over death. Holst fashioned his Sāvitri, the only successful early (1907-8) fruit of the Sanskrit-translating composer’s quest to compose an Indian opera, as a short, bittersweet shoot from the riches of the epic Mahabhrata, remarkably concise (under half an hour) for its pre-war time. The composer thought it would be best performed in the Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
As Dvořák’s "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka rose to its impassioned climax, Natalya Romaniw had to battle a helicopter thumping overhead. The helicopter lost (well, of course it did). As Nardus Williams and David Butt Phillip disappeared into the wings after a heart-rending "O soave fanciulla" from La Bohème, a squirrel scampered centre-stage to fill the dramatic vacuum. Anna Patalong and Ross Ramgobin’s wistful COVID-era take on "La ci darem la mano" from Mozart's Don Giovanni (pictured below) made sure that fingers never touched, but lent a previously unknown erotic frisson to a Read more ...
David Nice
Nostalgia of all kinds played a part in this summer evening’s divertissement. Some audience members were probably remembering when operetta held a greater sentimental sway than it does now; many would have been thinking of the full Opera Holland Park seasons – a proper theatre with raised seating, covered stagings, full orchestra and chorus – on what was now the bare terraced spot in front of the semi-derelict house. I was casting back in my mind to the blissful haven the park was in the spring, a necessary restorative on lockdown afternoon bike-rides and walks, and further to childhood Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Barrie Kosky’s production of Moses und Aron was staged at the Komische Oper Berlin in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Schoenberg’s opera is philosophical and open to a variety of interpretations. Kosky emphasises the story’s Jewish heritage, and the production is all about Jews and Judaism. That might seem a natural choice, given the occasion, but Kosky’s message is subtle, fully acknowledging the Holocaust, but presenting the Jewish people as complex and contradictory, and not just as victims.The production is dominated by the huge chorus, who are onstage Read more ...
David Nice
So much for the assertion that nowhere in the world would be staging the big Strauss and Wagner operas for the indefinite future. With a combination of lavish funding and good pandemic management on Austria's part, it’s been possible in Salzburg. Ironic, then, that though no holds are barred in terms of how close everyone on stage and in the pit can be, with any amount of feeling and touching permitted short (I’m guessing) of osculation, this Elektra feels, for the most part, distanced not socially (or, in the case of this work, anti-socially) but in psychological terms.Some of that could be Read more ...
Antonia Bain
The Narcissistic Fish is a brand new opera specifically created to be filmed. Set in Leith and written in Scots, it tells the story of restaurant owner and chef, Angus, and his brother Kai who are arguing over the death of their father, while the talented Belle struggles to carry on underpaid and under-appreciated.I was an opera novice when I started working at Scottish Opera as their first digital content producer in 2015. I had no idea what to expect when I saw my first opera but was completely hooked on the art form especially after seeing the company’s production of Rusalka directed by Read more ...
David Nice
It’s begun: very limited access to live music, the chance to sit before one or two players in the same room – as we were doing only three and a half months ago, in some cases thousands of us before an orchestra of up to a hundred musicians. When the big symphonies and operas can return is anyone’s guess; there is currently no real light at the end of the tunnel, in the UK at least, given the endless vortex into which governmental indecision and lack of funding have plunged us.Hope begins to fade with lack of a rescue package; without it, even flagships like the Royal Opera House will not be Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
The Opera Story is an enterprising set-up based in London and founded with a mission to commission and stage new operas by early career composers. They have so far produced three full-scale pieces, the earliest from 2017, performed in a reclaimed warehouse space in Peckham. I reviewed Dani Howard’s Robin Hood for theartsdesk in 2019 and found much to enjoy, not least the ambition of the company, and was looking forward to the new show Pandora’s Box, by composer Alex Woolf and librettist Dominic Kimberlin, which has now been postponed till 2021.Like so many musicians in the last three months, Read more ...