Opera Reviews
Patience/Tosca, English Touring OperaWednesday, 12 April 2017
How well do you know your bad Victorian poetry? “When through the purple corridors the screaming scarlet Ibis flew/In terror, and a horrid dew dripped from the moaning Mandragores.” Go on, guess the author. Or how about this? “What time the poet hath hymned/The writhing maid, lithe-limbed,/Quivering on amaranthine asphodel". Got it yet? The first is Oscar Wilde’s The Sphinx, from 1881. Read more... |
Bluebeard's Castle & The 8th Door, Scottish OperaMonday, 03 April 2017
What to pair with Bluebeard’s Castle? It’s always a dilemma for opera companies. Something lightweight, even comic, provides contrast but also risks trivialising Bartók’s dark, symbolist drama. Something equally brooding risks submerging the audience into an evening of endless gloom. Read more... |
Madama Butterfly, Royal OperaFriday, 31 March 2017
"È un'immensa pietà" - "it's heartbreaking," rather than "it's a huge pity" - sings consul Sharpless of "Butterfly" Cio-Cio San's fatal belief that her American husband will return to her. Read more... |
Alceste, Early Opera Company, Curnyn, Wigmore HallThursday, 30 March 2017
A wife dies to save her husband; a hero goes to hell and back to retrieve her from the underworld. Read more... |
Ormisda, St George's Hanover SquareWednesday, 29 March 2017
The annual London Handel Festival is dutifully working its way through every one of Handel’s operas in a cycle that will eventually take us from Alcina to Xerxes before, presumably, starting all over again. Read more... |
The First Commandment, Classical Opera, St John’s Smith SquareWednesday, 22 March 2017
Isn’t it funny? You wait ages for an opera by an eleven-year-old and then two turn up at once. The world’s feature journalists descended on Vienna at Christmas for a new take on Cinderella by Alma Deutscher. What they heard, for what it’s worth, was a precocious, glittery pastiche of Classical manners. Last night was the real deal. Read more... |
Partenope, English National OperaThursday, 16 March 2017
It's time again for surrealist charades at the nothing-doing mansion. Christopher Alden's Handel is back at ENO, making inconsequentiality seem wondrous. Read more... |
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Royal OperaSunday, 12 March 2017
Recent British-based productions have taken Wagner's paean to creativity, the reconciliation of tradition and the individual talent, at face value. Read more... |
The Winter's Tale, English National OperaTuesday, 28 February 2017
After a Royal Opera performance of Birtwistle's The Minotaur, a friend spotted Hans Werner Henze in the foyer and had the temerity to ask that annoying question "What did you think?" "Very competent and extremely well performed," came the reply. Read more... |
Hansel and Gretel, Opera NorthMonday, 27 February 2017
Opera North’s updated version of Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel takes place in what looks like a down-at-heel Leeds housing estate, the titular siblings shown filming the story using simple domestic props and back projections. Quite how the impoverished pair have acquired a high-end video camera isn’t made clear; presumably the assorted boxes of Christmas decorations scattered around Giles Cadel’s spare set fell off the back of the same lorry. Read more... |
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