Opera
stephen.walsh
Wagner was never satisfied with Tannhäuser, and it’s not hard to see why. Essentially a study of the tension between sensual and spiritual love, it was composed at a time when, by his own later confession, he lacked the resources to deal properly (that is, improperly) with the sensual element, and even in any profundity – one might feel – with the spiritual. The piece went through numerous revisions, extensions, compressions, tinkerings of one sort or another. But what was left is a patchwork of early and late, conventional and inspired, and a sometimes painfully naïve morality which tends to Read more ...
graham.rickson
Opera North’s ongoing Ring isn’t taking up much of the chorus’s time, which presumably is one of the reasons that many of its members have decamped half a mile east to collaborate with the West Yorkshire Playhouse in an eye-popping new staging of Sondheim’s Into The Woods. That opera companies can and should stage Sondheim is vindicated by this production: the musical values are superb, my only niggle being that James Holmes’s excellent pit players are hidden offstage. The tricksy ensemble numbers are dazzling, with every word and melodic line thrillingly clear.James Brining sets the opening Read more ...
David Nice
"Better than Puccini," raved one Tweeter after the final rehearsal of Opera Holland Park's season-opener. Nonsense: "nearly as good as Puccini" is the best any of his Italian contemporaries could hope for; that applies to Leoncavallo and the Cilea of Adriana Lecouvreur. Mascagni is more arthritic in his sense of movement – think of how long the plot of Cavalleria Rusticana takes to get going – and sometimes strives hard for those orchestral effects which seem so natural in Puccini. But Iris is at least half-interesting, unlike an OHP stinker, Zandonai's Francesca da Rimini, and it's Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment is 30 years old, and last night it celebrated in style. The orchestra has a long association with the music of Weber, who became iconic of their pioneering work in presenting 19th-century repertoire on period instruments. His greatest work received an impressive performance last night, one that demonstrated the many virtues of their unique approach to the work of the Romantics. But it wasn’t all a success, and was let down by a surprisingly modest staging concept from the usually ambitious David Pountney.The music of the opera is framed by Pountney in Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Though composed after and based on a play by the same author, Puccini’s spaghetti western is in no way a sequel to Madama Butterfly, his whisky-sour eastern. Fanciulla is Butterfly’s opposite in almost every respect, and to tell the truth it isn’t much at home in a small theatre like the one at Grange Park. Where Butterfly is delicate and light-handed, its successor is loud and punch-drunk. Its heroine is no frail Puccini victim but a tough mother figure surprised by true love. Simpering geishas are replaced by rough gold-diggers, and mawkish tragedy by the Read more ...
David Nice
On the itinerary of musical tourists around Europe, the opening of the Prague Spring Festival comes a close third to the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year's Day Concert and the Bayreuth experience. That said, Smetana's Má vlast (My Homeland) – the immoveable opener – is more of an acquired taste than Johann Strauss or Wagner.Too often Má vlast's six-tone poems have been served up as slabs of a national monument, with only two – Vltava (otherwise Germanised as Die Moldau) and From Bohemia's Woods and Fields – offering guaranteed bliss. This year Estonian Paavo Järvi gave the Czech Read more ...
David Nice
Common wisdom has it that the prolific output of 20th century Czech genius Bohuslav Martinů is very uneven, a judgment surely made without a complete hearing. Some listeners shrink from his fidgety polystylism. Many of us on the fringes of the Martinů hardcore, though, have found ourselves giddy with each new discovery of music we didn't know before: last year, string duos on a CD from viola-player Maxim Rysanov, this year piano trios from the Czech label Supraphon and now two one-act operas, this time live from Guildhall students.Before voicing any reservations, it has to be spelled out that Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Seventy years ago, almost to the month, Welsh National Opera took to the stage for the first time with a double bill of the terrible twins, Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci; and fifty years later the company celebrated with the same two works directed by Elijah Moshinsky, designed by Michael Yeargan. To repeat the exercise in the same productions after another twenty years might seem an egregious piece of navel-gazing. But Moshinsky made a clever point with his 1996 staging, about stylistic distances travelled and technical standards raised. And since that same point is if anything even Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
We don’t hear much about composer Stanisław Moniuszko in the West, but in Poland he’s considered a key figure in the history of opera. Moniuszko’s statue stands at the entrance of the National Opera House in Warsaw, and inside he’s depicted by several busts and portraits. In the second week of May, the venue hosted not only the Ninth International Stanisław Moniuszko Vocal Competition but also – in its Moniuszko Auditorium – Straszny dwór (The Haunted Manor), one of his most famous works.Straszny dwór, as presented here in a vibrant new staging from David Pountney (picutred below), Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
New operas are a risky business, or so the Royal Opera’s past experience teaches us. For years, visiting the company’s Linbury Studio Theatre was like rolling the dice while on a losing streak: vain, desperate hope followed inevitably by disappointment. Glare, The Virtues of Things, Clemency, the failed experiment that was OperaShots. But recently things have taken a turn. Gradually, thanks to works from Birtwistle, Haas and more, the risk has begun to pay off. Now Philip Venables’s 4.48 Psychosis – the first opera to emerge from the Royal Opera’s joint Composer-in-Residence doctorate with Read more ...
David Nice
"Unjustly neglected masterpiece" is a cliché of musical criticism, and usually an exaggeration. Romanian master Enescu's vast journey through aspects of the Oedipus myth seemed like an unacknowledged great among 20th century operas through the medium of the starrily-cast EMI recording with José van Dam as the noblest Greek of all; after Martinu's Julietta and Szymanowski's King Roger, here was the last titan to be properly served by a top UK production. Following two acts of La Fura dels Baus's monumental if sometimes skewed take last night, doubts had set in, but by the end, it did indeed Read more ...
David Nice
"We're off to Glyndebourne, to see a ra-ther bor-ing op-ra by Rosseeeni," quoth songwriting wags Kit and the Widow. So here it was at the Sussex house after a 34-year absence, the most famous of all his operas which includes the overture’s oboe tune to which those words were set, and it wasn't possible that The Barber of Seville, pure champagne, could ever be boring. Or was it? Never underestimate the power of vaguely-conceived direction to rob musical wit and precision of their proper glory.Cast and conductor have been near-perfectly chosen. Enrique Mazzola is a crisp and elegant master of Read more ...