Opera
David Nice
When "Maestro" Riccardo Muti left the Royal Opera's previous production of Verdi's fate-laden epic, disgusted by minor changes to fit the scenery on the Covent Garden stage, no-one was sorry when Antonio Pappano, the true master of the house then only two years into his glorious reign, took over. He's now unsurpassable in the pace and colouring of the great Verdi and Puccini scores. Signs from his previous collaborations with once radical director Christof Loy and the glorious cast assembled were that this time round Forza would be a total triumph. In the end, several mountains gave birth to Read more ...
David Nice
A rum cove sidles up pimping with a tatty business card offering the services of Sonyetka. Not for me, I say, pointing out that in any case she’ll be dead three hours later. "That's more than I know," he says and wanders off to hook other possible clients. Further on, rodent-headed creatures flit by. One seems to be in an altercation with a Rentokil officer. Odd, too, that there should be policemen parading the disco-lit, dilipidated Tower Ballroom on the edge of Edgbaston Reservoir. If you've ever been totally immersed in the Birmingham Opera Company experience - I only had once previously, Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
Selfish, cunning, cynical, the older generation has screwed up the world with aggression abroad and dishonesty at home. Can their children make it good again? This family drama of transgression and reparation threads through Idomeneo, the opera that Mozart – who had his own troublesome issues with both biological fathers and father-figure patrons – premiered in Munich in 1781. As it lifts the (by then) somewhat musty conventions of opera seria to formerly unimagined heights in a plot about returnees from the Trojan War and the cost their offspring pay for the elders’ bloodstained vanity, Read more ...
Bernard Hughes
What’s the one thing everyone knows about Robin Hood? That he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. So it was quite a brave decision to re-cast Robin as a rapacious Tory shires MP, doing his best to stop the poor becoming rich. At least, I think that was what happened: in much of the story is opaque, even having read the synopsis carefully. But this new new opera by composer Dani Howard has some striking passages, both of excellent singing and beautiful scoring.The Opera Story is a young company in only its third season, but already onto its third new piece. It doesn’t lack ambition: Read more ...
David Nice
It speaks vivid volumes for the superb health of our music colleges that the Guildhall School tackles every aspect of Britten's long and layered Shakespeare adaptation with total confidence. On Friday night, there wasn't a weak expressive link across a team of 19 soloists, many of them obviously destined for great things (totalling 29 if you add up both casts, though of course I can't speak for them all), and 46 top-notch players under the vivid guidance of the School's Head of Opera Studies, Dominic Wheeler. Though there's no shortage of magic, this is less an eerie Dream than a robust and Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
It’s all there. High kicks and tight corsets; silk and sequins and shenanigans in a broom closet; hot pinks and still hotter can-can girls; waltzing, scheming, sparring, and a bit with a banquet table. There’s even a dancing beaver. So why don’t I feel more elated?English National Opera’s new Merry Widow can’t be faulted for effort. But in comedy, as in seduction or sales, trying too hard can be almost as destructive as not trying at all. Gripping Lehar’s crystal champagne flute of an operetta in a hot fist only leads to spillage and a swift loss of bubbles.Everyone’s had a go at the Widow. Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Give hope to all, says Despina: play-act. Così fan tutte has always been a piece about four young and silly people being appalling to one another without much need for encouragement from a cynical old manipulator and a confused maid who, in the main, is the one character capable of arousing real sympathy. The big reveal in Jan Philipp Gloger’s production for the Royal Opera is that there is no big reveal. We’re all in on the act, and we’re all as bad as each other.It’s a point made literally in lights towards the close with the kind of sledgehammer obviousness that seems to have made for a Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Hel, heroine of Gavin Higgins and Francesca Simon’s new opera, is the illegitimate daughter of the Norse god Loki. In many ways The Monstrous Child itself feels like a bastard offspring, born – moody, mouthy and full of fragile rage – to Wagner’s Ring Cycle and Skins or possibly 13 Reasons Why.Hel has many more than 13 reasons for her anger. Rejected by her parents, tormented by the gods and banished to rule over the dead for all eternity, she’s determined to escape and find a way back to her crush Baldr – an aim complicated by the fact that she’s half-girl, half-corpse, dragging half a ton Read more ...
graham.rickson
Stravinsky acknowledged that his orchestra for The Rite of Spring was a large one because Diaghilev had promised him extra musicians (“I am not sure that my orchestra would have been as huge otherwise.”) It isn’t huge in Opera North’s production (★★★★★), and for practical reasons they're using the edition arranged by Jonathan McPhee in 1988 for a standard pit band. I expected to be underwhelmed, but, as conducted by Garry Walker, it sounded terrific, most of the sonic thrills emerging unscathed.This staging, a collaboration between Opera North and Leeds’s Phoenix Dance Theatre, marks the UK Read more ...
stephen.walsh
I last saw this Magic Flute, directed by Dominic Cooke, when it was new, some 14 years ago, and I remember it mainly, I’m afraid, for its lack of visual charm. Nothing much has changed: the relentless box sets (designer Julian Crouch), not a leaf or a blade of grass to be seen; the ridiculous, glaring orange suitings, bowler hats and umbrellas for Sarastro’s men (Orangemen, naturally); the dullness alleviated only by some witty animal costumes (Kevin Pollard), and the three charming boys – one of them actually a girl – in sailor suits, riding an aerial bike made out of a fish.Of course, the Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
The striking cover for the Brighton Festival 2019 programme shouts out loud who this year’s Guest Director is. Silhouetted in flowers, in stunning artwork by Simon Prades, is the unmistakeable profile of Malian musician Rokia Traoré. Taking place between 4th and 26th May at a host of south coast venues, this year’s Festival, which launched its schedule of events this morning, looks to be a multi-faceted extravaganza with true international reach. Once again, theartsdesk is proud to be a media partner.“I set out to bring new voices to the city to tell their stories,” Traoré explained, “ Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
You start off fighting it. Those arpeggios, the insistent reduction, simplification, repetition, the amplification of the smallest gesture into an epic. Then something happens. Somewhere among the slow-phase patterns pulsing on ear and eye, you surrender to Glass-time and the hypnosis is complete.Akhnaten is opera as therapy, as cocoon, as mindfulness exercise, clean as Marie Kondo’s living room and every bit as consoling. When you reduce your musical possessions to the barest minimum (hell, even the violins get jettisoned in this deliciously grainy score, along with the surtitles) you throw Read more ...