Opera Reviews
The Merry Widow, English National Opera review - glitter but no sparkleSaturday, 02 March 2019![]()
It’s all there. High kicks and tight corsets; silk and sequins and shenanigans in a broom closet; hot pinks and still hotter can-can girls; waltzing, scheming, sparring, and a bit with a banquet table. There’s even a dancing beaver. So why don’t I feel more elated? Read more...
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Così fan tutte, Royal Opera review - fine singing and elegant deceitsWednesday, 27 February 2019![]()
Give hope to all, says Despina: play-act. Così fan tutte has always been a piece about four young and silly people being appalling to one another without much need for encouragement from a cynical old manipulator and a confused maid who, in the main, is the one character capable of arousing real sympathy. Read more... |
The Monstrous Child, Royal Opera, Linbury Theatre review - fresh operatic mythology for teenagersFriday, 22 February 2019![]()
Hel, heroine of Gavin Higgins and Francesca Simon’s new opera, is the illegitimate daughter of the Norse god Loki. In many ways The Monstrous Child itself feels like a bastard offspring, born – moody, mouthy and full of fragile rage – to Wagner’s Ring Cycle and Skins or possibly 13 Reasons Why. Read more... |
The Rite of Spring/Gianni Schicchi, Opera North review - unlikely but musically satisfying pairingSunday, 17 February 2019![]()
Stravinsky acknowledged that his orchestra for The Rite of Spring was a large one because Diaghilev had promised him extra musicians (“I am not sure that my orchestra would have been as huge otherwise.”) It isn’t huge in Opera North’s production (★★★★★), and for practical reasons they're using the edition arranged by Jonathan McPhee in 1988 for a standard pit band. Read more... |
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... |
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... |
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