Opera Reviews
Best of 2017: OperaTuesday, 26 December 2017
It may not have been the best year for eye-popping productions; even visionary director Richard Jones fell a bit short with a tame-ish Royal Opera Bohème, though his non-operatic The Twilight Zone is something else. Instead there's been time to reflect on what makes a true... Read more...
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Cendrillon, RNCM, Manchester review - magic and spectacleFriday, 15 December 2017
The Royal Northern College of Music’s production of Massenet’s Cendrillon has a particularly strong professional production team, and it shows. This is one of the most attractively spectacular operas the college has mounted for years. Read more... |
Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci, Royal Opera review - one tenor, two samey brutesMonday, 04 December 2017
Are "Cav and Pag" inseparable? Clearly not, to judge from Opera North's "Little Greats" and elsewhere, but it's still the pairing of choice. Tricky, because as music-theatre, Leoncavallo's drama of rough life entwined with rough art stands high above Mascagni's Sicilian village shenanigans, despite great scenes and numbers in both. Read more... |
I, Object review - this operatic double-bill delivers just a single hitSaturday, 02 December 2017
A comma divides the title of this opera double-bill in two, but the works paired here (Michael Nyman’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Kate Whitley’s Unknown Position) each explore what happens when you take it away – when natural divisions, between human and object, self and other, perception and reality are dissolved, dismantled or elided. Read more... |
Falstaff, RLPO, Petrenko, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall review - Bryn Terfel leads a merry danceMonday, 27 November 2017
Even seemingly immortal singers grow old. Sir Bryn is closer to the "Martinmas summer" of Shakespeare's and Verdi's Sir John than when first he put on the fat suit at the Royal Opera 18 years ago. Even if he walks the gouty walk that matches the belly, vocally he seems richer than ever. Read more... |
The Bear, Mid Wales Opera review - small stage, big ambitionsSaturday, 25 November 2017
Go west, opera-lover: Mid Wales Opera is back in business. In fact, it’s been back since spring this year, when it toured venues in Wales and England with a warmly reviewed Handel Semele and a striking (and impressively cast) Magic Flute inspired by 1970s British sci-fi. Read more... |
The Rake's Progress, Wilton's Music Hall review - mercurial Stravinsky made cumbersomeTuesday, 21 November 2017
If you're not going to mention the imaginative genius of Stravinsky, Auden and Kallman within the covers of your programme, and the only article, by the director, is titled "Acting Naturally", then the production had better deliver. Read more... |
Semiramide, Royal Opera review - Rossini's Queen is backMonday, 20 November 2017
It has long been a mystery why no new production of Semiramide should have been staged at Covent Garden since 1887: un offesa terribile considering that this splendid melodramma tragico should have been the inaugural production of the Royal Italian Opera House (our current theatre’s predecessor) in 1847. Read more... |
Marnie, English National Opera review – hyped new opera doesn’t hit the heightsSunday, 19 November 2017
The great and good of the London music scene were gathered at English National Opera last night for the unveiling of American Wunderkind Nico Muhly’s new opera, Marnie. Although it was commissioned by the Met in New York, somehow ENO managed to wangle the world premiere, which has been widely hyped and was ecstatically received by a packed house. Read more... |
Lucia di Lammermoor, Royal Opera review - creepy, violent and intenseTuesday, 31 October 2017
Katie Mitchell’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor opened at Covent Garden in 2016 and now returns for a first revival. Royal Opera were clearly expecting great things, even from the start, and this is the third cast to have presented the show, after two separately cast runs last year, and a commercial DVD is also available. Read more... |
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