Opera Buzz
Cinderella goes to the squareThursday, 14 July 2011
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... Read more...
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Opera North U-turn once "queer" is changed to "gay"Friday, 08 July 2011
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. Read more... |
Why Ticciati will be great for GlyndebourneFriday, 08 July 2011
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. Read more... |
Opera North: not homophobic, just craven?Tuesday, 05 July 2011
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". Read more... |
Dream againFriday, 24 June 2011
It's not often that we in the critical world revisit a production towards the end of a run to see how it's settled. I had two reasons for wanting to return to Christopher Alden's English National Opera production of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Read more... |
What's your title? This is the ROYAL Opera HouseThursday, 16 June 2011
The Royal Opera House prides itself on knowing exactly who is registering on its mailing services, and just how high-class they are. Mr, Mrs, Ms, Miss, Dr, really can’t cover the possibilities. Hence the hilarity greeting their online registering process, which offers no fewer than 132 options for your title - which it is mandatory to fill in. Read more... |
The teenage Liszt's song for EuropeTuesday, 10 May 2011
For last year's Europe Day concert, presidency-holder Spain fielded a Paco Peña showstopper in what's for the past three years been the venue of choice, St John's, Smith Square. This 9 May, the Hungarians' six-month stint yielded not a wow-factor spectacular - for me, that would have been a knees-up with violinist Gaby... Read more... |
Covent Garden and Thomas Allen remember Robert TearSaturday, 02 April 2011
Last night the programme for the Royal Opera's current production of Fidelio included a special tribute to that most characterful of tenors, Robert Tear, who died this week at the age of 72. Only... Read more... |
David Pountney to head Welsh National OperaFriday, 01 April 2011
After what must seem like a long exile, the opera director with one of the most distinctive track records in the business is to return as chief executive of a company which has been on fitful form recently. As, it must be said, has Pountney's recent history after the celebrated "powerhouse" era at English National Opera alongside Mark Elder and Peter Jonas. Read more... |
Summary of main Arts Council winners and losersWednesday, 30 March 2011
A sliderule of 11-15 per cent reductions in annual grants by 2015, compared with this year, has been applied to Britain's major orchestras, opera, dance, theatre and music organisations. One major gainer is London's Barbican Centre - one major loser is the now world-famous Almeida Theatre, which loses almost 40 per cent of its current annual subsidy despite its reputation for innovation and discovery. However, the Arcola Theatre, another small innovative theatre, gets a big boost. Read more... |
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