Opera
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... 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.It’s a short step from there to Cecilia Stinton’s new Rigoletto for Opera Holland... 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.Partnership and diversity are the buzz... 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... 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.It doesn’t attempt a retelling... Read more... |
First Person: composer Russell Hepplewhite on setting John Burningham's 'Borka' to musicSunday, 28 May 2023
Taking a book and lifting it from the page so that it works on the stage is daunting. When the target audience happens to be children aged between about four and eight, the challenge is magnified. As I write this, a brand new... 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... Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne review - stunning, exuberant production reveals human nature in all its complexitySaturday, 20 May 2023
Why stage Don Giovanni in a post #MeToo world? That’s the question most frequently being asked about Mariame Clément’s new production for Glyndebourne and on its opening night she delivered a response that was as conceptually subtle as it was... Read more... |
The Pearl Fishers, Opera North review - focus on the mysteryWednesday, 17 May 2023
The Pearl Fishers is very much a mid-19th century Romantic opera, with a plot that’s basically a love triangle set in an exotic location. Its writers, Michel Carré and Eugène Cormon, were not the greatest of plot inventors, and after hearing the... Read more... |
Blue, English National Opera review - the company’s boldest vindication yet?Monday, 24 April 2023
Two recent operas by women have opened in London’s two main houses within a week. Both have superbly crafted librettos dealing with gun violence without a shot being fired, giddyingly fine production values and true ensembles guided by perfect... Read more... |
Arminio, Royal Opera review - Handel does Homeland, and it worksSaturday, 22 April 2023
Invasion by a colonising power has convulsed a country, dividing families – even individuals – between the rival claims of resistance and collaboration. A captured freedom-fighter from the indigenous elite faces execution; an imperial general hopes... Read more... |
Innocence, Royal Opera review - timely, layered drama with almost incidental musicTuesday, 18 April 2023
To create a sensitive and original music-drama around the subject of a school killing is a colossal achievement. Director Simon Stone, set designer Chloe Lamford and novelist Sofi Oksanen’s cutting libretto make Innocence seem like a masterpiece. I... Read more... |
