Opera
The Bartered Bride, Garsington Opera review - brilliant revival of a comedy of crueltyMonday, 03 July 2023
Smetana’s enchanting bitter-sweet comedy is probably on the danger-list for cancellation by the modern guardians of our moral sanctity. The plot hinges, like Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge, on the cash-sale of the hero’s bride (in Hardy, the wife... Read more... |
Don Carlo, Royal Opera review - Lise Davidsen soars above routineSaturday, 01 July 2023
Not a good start. The tenor (Brian Jagde) walks downstage and sings loudly, if securely, to the audience: hardly a characterisation of an idealistic young Infante meditating on love. The next voice, the Page’s, is barely heard (Ella Taylor gets... Read more... |
Out of Her Mouth, Dunedin Consort, Mahogany Opera, Hera, Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh review - she carried a watermelonTuesday, 27 June 2023
A joint venture between Dunedin Consort, Mahogany Opera and intersectional feminist opera company Hera, Out of Her Mouth is a semi-staged version of three short baroque cantatas. Written by French composer Élisabeth Jacquet de La... Read more... |
Candide, Welsh National Opera review - vaut le voyage, just for the visual sideMonday, 26 June 2023
If you read the synopsis of Candide - which I strongly advise if you plan a visit to this new WNO production - you may well wonder how it will be possible to get through so much in so short a time. Voltaire’s novella is itself fairly short, but... Read more... |
Werther, Grange Park Opera review - Italian-American principal singers with strong chemistryMonday, 26 June 2023
Grange Park Opera has been setting a high standard in French opera ever since the company's first proper season in 1999. This Werther is the company's third by Jules Massenet. The first two were rarities, pioneering efforts: a fascinating tussle... Read more... |
Ariadne auf Naxos, Garsington Opera review - golden thread leads to deep emotionSunday, 25 June 2023
When tears well up during stretches of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s curious hybrid which you never expected to move you, something special's going on. The magic happened last night in an evening which I didn't anticipate equalling “the Carmelites... Read more... |
Everest, Barbican review - a powerful operatic debut from Joby TalbotSaturday, 24 June 2023
Schubert gave us a winter’s journey for the 19th century: a wandering lover brooding, remembering, fantasising, maybe even dying to the chilly accompanying churn of the hurdy-gurdy man. In Everest, composer Joby Talbot and librettist Gene Scheer... Read more... |
Il trovatore, Royal Opera review - heaven and hellFriday, 23 June 2023
The trouble with Trovatore, Verdi’s sometimes barrel-organish, slightly middle-aged troubadour, isn’t so much the silly shocker of a plot, triggered by a gypsy so crazed with vengeance that she throws her own baby on a bonfire by mistake, as the... Read more... |
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. Since its premiere in 2004, this unexceptionable staging – “this wall, this fountain, this cool shade” all present and laboriously... 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... 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... 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... Read more... |
