Opera Reviews
The Maiden in the Tower & Kashchei the Immortal, Buxton FestivalTuesday, 10 July 2012
Many years ago in Helsinki I met Sibelius’s daughter, Margareta, and her husband, the conductor Jussi Jalas. He used to come to Manchester to conduct the Halle. And it was he who rescued from obscurity his father-in-law’s only completed opera, The Maiden in the Tower, composed in 1896. This he did in 1981 on Finnish radio, not long before he died. Read more... |
Jephtha, Buxton FestivalMonday, 09 July 2012
Handel, a national hero at the time, went blind writing Jephtha, his last great oratorio, and sadly thence into terminal decline. Now, 260 years after its first performance at Covent Garden, we have a new production by Frederic Wake-Walker, who is also responsible for the design. So, it’s very much his show. Read more... |
Intermezzo, Buxton FestivalSunday, 08 July 2012
No sooner had the Olympic torch been run out of town than in rushed the cavalcade of opera singers, musicians, actors, dancers and literary talkers for the start of the 34th Buxton Festival. Leading them, so to speak, was Stephen Barlow, the new Artistic Director. Nothing daunted, he decided to take up the baton for the opening night. Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne Festival OperaSaturday, 30 June 2012
It's amazing how long it takes to realise that we're in the 1970s in Michael Grandage's new Glyndebourne production of Le nozze di Figaro. The mansion house suggests that we're in the 18th century. The light and latticework says we're in Mozart's original Seville. The poor villagers that scurry about during the overture preparing the stage for visitors could be from pretty much anywhere Mediterranean and from any century. Read more... |
Dr Dee, English National OperaFriday, 29 June 2012
Riding the same wave of affectionate, riotously melancholic Englishness which carried Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem to success, Damon Albarn’s Dr Dee is dark enough to delight even the most cynical of Jubilee naysayers, gorgeous enough in its national pageantry to crown the cultural celebrations of this landmark year. Read more... |
Katya Kabanova, Longborough FestivalWednesday, 27 June 2012
Janáček’s obsession with Russia has always intrigued me: something to do with a shared Slav ancestry traceable to peasant roots being crunched to pieces by the modern world. Gone are the rolling paragraphs and the vast, empty fields and sky. In Katya Kabanova everyone is hemmed in by ancient attitudes and superstitions, and the music, with its abrupt, laconic gestures, is a part of the prison. Read more... |
Les Troyens, Royal OperaTuesday, 26 June 2012
Les Troyens is one of music's mythical beasts. The greatest opera that few will have ever seen. Until recently the epic was considered so demanding that it was thought unstageable. David McVicar's new production for the Royal Opera House is only the second in its history. So for most of us last night will have been the first chance to witness the five-hour masterpiece in its original French. Read more... |
Billy Budd, English National OperaTuesday, 19 June 2012
It should be hard to make Britten’s Billy Budd a bloodless, passionless, contextless bore, shouldn’t it? This is after all a lacerating story about men behaving badly on a fighting ship in the 1797 wars between Britain and Revolutionary France, a story where a man of great viciousness meets a man of much havering and a decent, possibly extraordinary lad loses his life. Read more... |
Bow Down, The Village Underground, Spitalfields FestivalThursday, 14 June 2012
There’s a lovely moment in The Opera Group’s production of Bow Down. An actor motions to a member of the audience and grins bleakly: “He thought he was here for an opera….”. It’s an aside, over before we’ve even fully registered it, but it’s one that reminds us that both Tony Harrison and Harrison Birtwistle knew exactly what they were doing when they constructed this amputated, bleeding limb of a work and christened it an “opera”, back in 1977. Read more... |
Così Fan Tutte, Opera Holland ParkSaturday, 09 June 2012
With the obvious exceptions of Verdi’s twin masterpieces Otello and Falstaff, Così fan tutte is the most Shakespearean of operas. Centuries before anyone invented the term, it’s nothing less than opera’s most elegant study in sexual politics. Written with the textural richness and emotional reversals of Much Ado About Nothing, it needs acting/singing performances of true depth in order to succeed. Read more... |
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