Opera Reviews

Ariadne auf Naxos, Welsh National Opera

stephen Walsh Friday, 08 October 2010

Ariadne auf Naxos, according to its librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, is all about fidelity: fidelity in love, fidelity in art, fidelity in spirit. Ariadne on her island, abandoned by Theseus, can give herself to Bacchus only by persuading herself that he’s a god. The actress Zerbinetta gives herself to every man in sight, including the Composer (played, incidentally, by a girl), who for a moment weakens in his lofty contempt for these comic actors who intrude on his high ideals...

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Radamisto, English National Opera

alexandra Coghlan Friday, 08 October 2010

If interior décor could shout, then last night’s music might have proved altogether incidental. The curtain rises to reveal a set gift-wrapped – ramparts, city walls and all – in the brightest of hot-pink damasks: a Nicky Haslam acid trip. Ladies and gentlemen, we are now entering operatic Orient 2.0, a sexy, postmodern take on the original you know and love, complete with an oversized menagerie of animals, evil tyrants and exotic princesses.

Les Pêcheurs de Perles in concert, Royal Opera House

David Nice Monday, 04 October 2010

Nicole Cabell: Gorgeous presence, classy phrasing as Hindu priestess Léïla

Ditch the divers, the video-projected sea and the Relevance with a capital R of ENO's production last season - which managed all three very well indeed - and what remains of Bizet's Pearl Fishers in concert (and in French)? Three ravishing arias, three passionate duets, orchestration and harmony of a subtlety way beyond the plot's cod...

The Seckerson Tapes: Ailish Tynan on Radamisto

Edward Seckerson Sunday, 03 October 2010

Ailish Tynan plays a short, fat, bald man in David Alden's staging of Handel's Radamisto at ENO. It is, she says, an occupational hazard when venturing into the cross-gender world of 18th-century opera. That Tynan is one of our brightest young stars - a shining lyric soprano equally at home in the rarefied world of song as she is in opera - only adds to the somewhat surreal prospect of hearing that voice emanating from a grotesquely fat-suited body.

Sellars and Viola's Tristan und Isolde, Royal Festival Hall

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Sunday, 26 September 2010

People always overlook how much of a hippie Richard Wagner was intellectually. His philosophical stance differs little from that of Neil from The Young Ones. It's a side of Wagner you can't get away from in Tristan und Isolde, with its endless railing against temporal realities and its search for universal oneness - yeah man, oneness.

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Niobe, Regina di Tebe, Royal Opera

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Friday, 24 September 2010

One after the other they came. Stunning aria after stunning aria. Affecting in their harmonies, infectious in their rhythms, arresting in their textures, vivid in their melodies. The Royal Opera had taken a mighty gamble with Agostino Steffani's 300-year-old Niobe, Regina di Tebe, a forgotten opera by a forgotten composer. But they were completely right to do so. For Niobe is a masterpiece. And last night's performance was a triumph.

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The Makropulos Case, English National Opera

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Tuesday, 21 September 2010

'Amanda Roocroft was incredible as Emilia Marty, both vocally and physically, capturing the fragility of this well-travelled soul as well as the mania'

Opera spends so much of its time killing off female protagonists that it's refreshing to come back to The Makropulos Case. In it Janáček, in one of his many moments of generosity, imagines what might happen if you allowed a woman not just to live but to live forever. The answer? They become a bloody nightmare.

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Faust, English National Opera

Igor Toronyi-Lalic Sunday, 19 September 2010

Gounod's Faust is many things: vaudeville act, sentimental romance, Gothic tragedy, Catholic catechism, in short, a wholly unrealistic but winningly schizophrenic work that should be taken about as seriously as an episode of Sunset Beach.

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Fidelio, Welsh National Opera, Cardiff

stephen Walsh Saturday, 18 September 2010

In fact Giuseppe Frigeni’s production and sets have already been seen in Bordeaux, so perhaps it’s more that the novelty by now has worn off. Either way, it’s a miserable affair, devoid of movement or dramatic tension, obscure in its characterisation and motivation, poorly lit and self-evidently costumed not just for a different cast, but for a different race of men and women.

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The Adventures of Pinocchio, Opera North

graham Rickson Friday, 17 September 2010

There’s something deliciously extravagant about this Pinocchio by composer Jonathan Dove and librettist Alasdair Middleton. It’s remarkably faithful to Carlo Collodi’s picaresque text, and so we get everything. Elaborately costumed characters enter with spectacular props, then disappear having barely made their point, my favourite being the four top-hatted black rabbits who threaten to escort Pinocchio offstage in a coffin after he’s refused to take his medicine.