Opera Reviews
Werther, Royal Opera review - Kaufmann off form in this stiff revivalWednesday, 21 June 2023
Benoit Jacquot’s handsome period production of Werther has been quietly putting in the miles for the Royal Opera. Read more...
|
L'elisir d'amore, Longborough Festival review - agreeable nonsense in a semi-modern English villageWednesday, 21 June 2023
Frederick Delius composed an opera called A Village Romeo and Juliet; Donizetti composed a sort of village Tristan and Isolde, but called it L’elisir d’amore – The Love Potion. The hero, Nemorino, inspired by the Tristan tale, buys an elixir off a passing quack, in the hope it will make the beautiful, capricious Adina fall for him. Read more... |
Hansel and Gretel, Opera Holland Park review - the Great Grimm Bake-OffMonday, 12 June 2023
Like any decent cake (and we saw plenty on the Holland Park stage), a tasty production of Hansel and Gretel needs a careful balance of flavours. Sweet and sharp; light and dark; fantasy and realism; fright and delight. Directed by John Wilkie, Opera Holland Park’s version of Engelbert Humperdinck’s well-preserved “fairy-tale opera” from 1893 skilfully mixes its ingredients into a sort of Great Grimm Bake-Off. It hints at horrors but never really threatens to turn sour. Read more... |
Dialogues des Carmélites, Glyndebourne review - faith overwhelmed by horrorSunday, 11 June 2023
Harrowing and holiness alternate in Poulenc’s unique masterpiece, nominally an opera about nuns during the French revolution, at a deeper level a music-drama about the greatest disturbances in the human condition. Glyndebourne’s cast, conductor and orchestra handle the variety wth total mastery. If Barrie Kosky’s production lets horror overwhelm us, that’s justified too. If you’re not a heap at the end of it, that’s your problem. Read more... |
Princess Ida, OAE, Wilson, QEH review - musical brilliance undermined by textual botchFriday, 09 June 2023
Sullivan’s score for his eighth collaboration with Gilbert is vintage work, mostly equal to the splendid sentinels flanking it, Iolanthe and The Mikado. On Wednesday night master animator John Wilson did its buoyancy and occasional pathos full justice. But what of Gilbert’s words? “A woman’s [sic] college! Maddest folly going!” doesn’t promise an operetta for our times. Read more... |
Rigoletto, Opera Holland Park review - Verdi's Duke gets the Oxbridge treatmentWednesday, 31 May 2023
“I am a poor student,” the Duke tells a smitten Gilda, in music that can barely keep a straight face, so plush is its melody, so oozing with confidence and privilege. Read more... |
Requiem, Opera North review - partnership and diversityWednesday, 31 May 2023
Innovation is always a risky business. Opera North’s vision and ambition for this production is to create, in effect, a new genre: a combination of staged choral-orchestral performance with contemporary dance. Read more... |
Götterdämmerung, Longborough Festival review - from the hieratic to the mundane and backTuesday, 30 May 2023
Götterdämmerung is not only the grandest of Wagner’s Ring operas, it is also the most varied. Siegfried’s journey down the Rhine transports him in a short quarter-hour from the hieratic world of the Norns and the World Ash to the soap-opera of the Gibichungs and their anxieties about marriage and political standing (opinion polls?). Read more... |
L'elisir d'amore, Glyndebourne review - fun and unfussy, with quality at its coreMonday, 29 May 2023
Sometimes a production which isn’t trying to do anything too clever can be quite refreshing. Sinéad O’Neill's revival of Annabel Arden’s 2007 Glyndebourne touring production of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore is just that. Read more... |
Wozzeck, Royal Opera review - orchestral and visual beauty salve human misery at its most extremeMonday, 22 May 2023
If you’re going to be locked in an auditorium with a crazed soldier for over 90 minutes, you need to be overwhelmed by the human frailty and baseness in Büchner’s still-shocking stage play of the late 1830s, the spiderweb beauty of Berg’s 1925 score to match it and a vision in various stage pictures. Director Deborah Warner, conductor Antonio Pappano and set designer Hyemi Shin deliver on all fronts. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
I first read Anne Gunter’s story about five years ago, when I was in my first year of university at Oxford, little knowing it would over time lead...
The screenwriting debut of actor Andrew Buchan,...
A young woman (Laure Calamy; Call my Agent!; Full Time; Her Way) is trying to pluck up the courage to call her...
In a too brightly tiled Gentlemen’s public convenience (Nitin Parmar’s beautifully realised set is as much a character as any of the men we meet...
“Death doesn’t scare me at all,” said my friend Christopher Hitchens during our last telephone conversation. “After all, it’s the only certainty...
“The name of this group is Mayan Space Station.” In spite of the billing as The William Parker Trio, their bassist – coolly introducing himself as...
I’m writing this in the lobby of the...
Sum 41 honour their 27-year career with Heaven :x: Hell, a 20-track double album, due to be their final, without a single skip. Harking...
From Game of Thrones producers David Benioff and DB Weiss, in cahoots with Alexander Woo, 3 Body Problem is Netflix’s daring...