Opera Reviews
The Magic Flute, Welsh National Opera review - charming to hear, charmless to look atSaturday, 16 February 2019
I last saw this Magic Flute, directed by Dominic Cooke, when it was new, some 14 years ago, and I remember it mainly, I’m afraid, for its lack of visual charm. Read more...
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Akhnaten, English National Opera review - still a mesmerising spectacleTuesday, 12 February 2019
You start off fighting it. Those arpeggios, the insistent reduction, simplification, repetition, the amplification of the smallest gesture into an epic. Then something happens. Somewhere among the slow-phase patterns pulsing on ear and eye, you surrender to Glass-time and the hypnosis is complete. Read more... |
Un ballo in maschera, Welsh National Opera review - opera as brilliant self-parodyMonday, 11 February 2019
Why is Un Ballo in maschera not as popular as the trio of Verdi masterpieces – Rigoletto, Traviata, Trovatore – that, with a couple of digressions, preceded it in the early 1850s? Its music is scarcely less brilliant than theirs, and if its plot is on a par of absurdity with Trovatore’s, it is at least, on the whole, more fun. Read more... |
La Damnation de Faust, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - 'concert opera' indeedMonday, 11 February 2019
Berlioz called it a "concert opera". His telling of the Faust story is in scenes and highly theatrical, but a bit of a challenge to put on in the theatre, with its marching armies, floating sylphs, dancing will-o’-the-wisps and galloping horses. It seems he expected it to be a kind of giant cantata, and that’s the way the Hallé and Sir Mark Elder perform it. Read more... |
Anthropocene, Hackney Empire review - vivid soundscapes but not quite enough thrillsFriday, 08 February 2019
The flayed corpse of a dead seal hangs red and grotesque at the back of the stage. It’s a placeholder; we know that by the end of Anthropocene – Scottish composer Stuart McRae’s latest collaboration with librettist Louise Welsh – something more familiar, and far more horrifying, will take its place. Read more... |
Katya Kabanova, Royal Opera review - inner torment incarnateTuesday, 05 February 2019
Backstories, we're told, are a crucial part of stage visionary Richard Jones's rehearsal process. Read more... |
Katya Kabanova, Opera North review – a grim taleMonday, 04 February 2019
A sad tale’s best for winter, and Opera North have returned to Janáček’s lyrical taken on a classic Russian drama of domestic abuse, guilt and suicide for this ingredient of their current season. Read more... |
Die Walküre, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - love shines outMonday, 28 January 2019
Harpers on the undeniably offensive aspect of Wagner the man might question attending a concert performance of his second Ring opera on World Holocaust Day. Fortunately there's nothing anti-semitic to be found anywhere in Die Walküre. Read more... |
The Queen of Spades, Royal Opera review - uneven cast prey to overthought conceptMonday, 14 January 2019
Prince Yeletsky, one of the shortest roles for a principal baritone in opera but with the loveliest of arias, looms large in Stefan Herheim's concept of The Queen of Spades. Read more... |
Hänsel und Gretel, Royal Opera review - not quite hungry enoughFriday, 14 December 2018
Once upon a time there was the terrible mouth of Richard Jones's Welsh National Opera/Met Hänsel und Gretel, finding an idiosyncratic equivalent to the original Engelbert Humperdinck's dark Wagnerian heart. Then came something very nasty in the witch's deep freeze of the last Royal Opera staging, something of a dog's dinner from Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser. Read more... |
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