mon 07/04/2025

Opera Reviews

Un ballo in maschera, Chelsea Opera Group, Cadogan Hall review - Italianate vitality, if not much finesse

David Nice

Eighteenth century Sweden is the nominal setting for A Masked Ball, but its essence is a unique mixture of Italian testosterone and French opéra-comique elegance. If this concert performance brought it closer to the indiscriminate vitality of early Verdi rather than the experimental shades of the middle period, there was still a huge amount to enjoy, and one stellar performance.

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La Rondine, Opera North review - rehabilitation for a Puccini damp squib?

Robert Beale

The signal achievement of this production of La Rondine may be that James Hurley (director) and Kerem Hasan (conductor) have rehabilitated it to its proper place, against the perception that it’s the least successful of Puccini’s mature operas.

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Masque of Might, Opera North review - a tale of ecological virtue

Robert Beale

Sir David Pountney’s creation of a “masque” performance for our times, recycling music Purcell wrote for his, is downright good entertainment even if the plotline’s a bit incoherent.

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Iolanthe, English National Opera review - still gorgeous but ever so slightly less funny than before

David Nice

Parliament may be topsy-turvy, with a motley bunch of Lords the only hope in vetoing outrageous bills, but up the road at the London Coliseum a more disciplined company is steering a luxury liner with perfect craft. Cal McCrystal’s best G&S so far, where fairies meet peers with, as the cliché has it, hilarious results, was a winner first time round, with gorgeous designs by Paul Brown taking fairyland, Arcadia and Westminster seriously. 

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Faust, Irish National Opera review - world-class singing turns the musical-dramatic screw

David Nice

Is Gounod’s Faust really a “complex and multi-layered work”, as director Jack Furness claims? Goethe’s original and Berlioz’s Damnation, absolutely; this tuneful concoction, half light opera, half kitsch melodrama, not so much. If Furness’s take leads him to concept overload, as well as quite a few really strong ideas, the big strength here lies in the casting of three world-class singers in the eternal triangle of rake, seduceable innocent and devil.

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Falstaff, Opera North review - going green and having fun

Robert Beale

There’s a charmingly retro feel to Opera North’s new Falstaff, which comes from it being done as part of their new “green”, i.e. ecologically conscious, season.

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La Traviata, Welsh National Opera review - memorable revival, unforgettable lead

stephen Walsh

It’s always tempting, at curtain-up in La Traviata, to settle back, half-close one’s eyes, and soak up the familiar without the anxiety of the new. Not this time you won’t. David McVicar’s lavish 2009 text-true staging is being revived with a generally strong, stylish and dependable cast.

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Peter Grimes, English National Opera review - not quite the pity or the truth

David Nice

Britten’s biggest cornucopia of invention seems unsinkable, and no-one seeing his breakthrough 1945 opera for the first time in this revival will fail to register its forceful genius. David Alden’s expressionist nightmare of a production, though, has never seemed to me to hit the heart of the matter. And though musical values are strong, ENO music director Martyn Brabbins doesn’t always keep the tension flowing.

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The Yellow Wallpaper, Lilian Baylis Studio review - a tense and intimate monodrama

Bernard Hughes

What a difference a few years make. In 2019 I reviewed composer Dani Howard’s first opera, Robin Hood, also produced by The Opera Story, and commented on the fundraising success that enabled a cast of six and an ensemble of 10.

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Das Rheingold, Royal Opera - knotty, riveting route to destruction

David Nice

Let’s set aside, to begin with, the question of the concept, other than to praise it as consistent. Most vital about this brave new Rheingold is the vindication of director Barrie Kosky’s claim that “what makes a Ring production interesting is the detailed work within the scenes between the characters”. With a conductor as intent on clarity and meaning as Antonio Pappano, and a true ensemble of performers willing to go along with him and Kosky, the battle is three-quarters won.

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