Opera Reviews
The Importance of Being Earnest, Barbican HallFriday, 27 April 2012
Gerald Barry's new operatic adaptation of Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest delivers a number of firsts. The first opera score to contain an ostinato for smashed plates. The first orchestra to include a part for pistols and wellington boots. The first opera (that I know of) to offer the role of an aging mother to a male bass. And the first opera I've been to where I've cried with laughter. Read more...
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La Fille du Régiment, Royal OperaFriday, 20 April 2012
Since it obviously can't be taken in any way seriously, one big plus for Donizetti’s deeply silly (and, narratively, extremely sketchy) operetta is that it offers everyone plenty of room for manoeuvre(s), an opportunity the Covent Garden team had clearly decided they were not about to miss when putting together this twice-revived production. Read more... |
Jakob Lenz, ENO, Hampstead TheatreWednesday, 18 April 2012
Forget opera-glasses, the must-have accessory for the contemporary opera-goer in London is fast becoming a sturdy pair of wellingtons. No sooner had we all dried off from our voyage into The Heart of Darkness at the Royal Opera House (where Edward Dick’s watery set lapped dangerously close to the orchestra pit) than we find ourselves up to our knees in the boggy marshlands and treacherous pools of Sam Brown’s Jakob Lenz. Read more... |
Parsifal, Mariinsky Opera/Gergiev, Wales Millennium CentreSunday, 01 April 2012
Is it my imagination, or are we getting more Wagner in concert than we used to? It could be a welcome development. How marvellous not to have to tremble at the thought of the latest flight of directorial fantasy: Isolde pregnant, Siegfried as an airline pilot, the Grail temple transformed into the Reichstag (no prizes for guessing which of these is a real case). Read more... |
Rigoletto, Royal OperaSaturday, 31 March 2012
David McVicar’s Rigoletto hurls full-frontal nudity and an orgy at the audience within its opening minutes – dramatic grenades to clear the well-worn ground ahead. Back in 2001 this may have been enough to shock-and-awe, but a decade and a couple of revivals on and it takes rather more. And more we certainly get in the current revival. Read more... |
Riccardo Primo, Britten Theatre, Royal College of MusicWednesday, 28 March 2012
No greater proof of the potency of the current Handel revival can be found than the London Handel Festival, now in its 35th year. The festival continues to fill concert halls and churches across London every Spring with the composer’s chamber repertoire, but it is the annual opera that remains unquestionably the main event. Read more... |
Miss Fortune, Royal OperaTuesday, 13 March 2012
I find it hard to square what I know about composer Judith Weir with what happened last night. In one corner lies her 30-year output of songs, choral pieces and operas - as engaging and beguiling an oeuvre as that of any living composer's. I think of her waggish song cycle King Harald's Saga or her playful opera A Night at the Chinese Opera. Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Barbican TheatreWednesday, 29 February 2012
Love it or hate it Christopher Alden’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at English National Opera last year made quite the impact, banishing any fey woodland glades and general waftiness from Benjamin Britten’s opera and embracing a rather more astringent visual aesthetic. It’s unfortunate then that Martin Lloyd-Evans’s production for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama should follow so closely behind, begging comparisons that don’t best serve his World War II interpretation. Read more... |
Rusalka, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 28 February 2012
Why has the Royal Opera not staged Dvořák’s Rusalka before now? I know there have been plausible distractions: the lock grip of Italian repertoire, fear of singing Czech, fixation with Dvořák as an instrumental composer, two world wars, a shortage of good water nymphs. But Sadler’s Wells gave the British premiere of this musically sumptuous "lyric fairytale" (its official description) as long ago as 1959. Read more... |
The Death of Klinghoffer, English National OperaSunday, 26 February 2012
In October 1985 four Palestinian terrorists boarded the Achille Lauro cruise liner, took the 400-odd passengers hostage, shot an old disabled American Jew dead and flung his body overboard. Of all the many atrocities in the long war between the Palestinians and Israelis the murder of Leon Klinghoffer has always struck me as being one of the more morally cut and dried incidents. Hardly worthy of any kind of lengthy debate, let alone dramatic exposition. Read more... |
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