thu 03/04/2025

18th century

Tales of Apollo and Hercules, London Handel Festival review - compelling elements, but a failed experiment

Over the last three years of the London Handel Festival, two experimental productions have proved to be highlights – not just of the festival itself – but of the musical year. In 2023, Adele Thomas’s In The Realms of Sorrow brought sweat,...

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La finta giardiniera, The Mozartists, Cadogan Hall review - blooms in the wild garden

Just now, the notion of a long-term project that concludes in 2041 sounds like an optimistic bet on the far future worthy of some 18th-century Enlightenment philosophe – Voltaire’s Dr Pangloss, maybe. The musicians of The Mozartists are clearly...

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Stiletto, Charing Cross Theatre review - new musical excess

That friend you have who hates musicals – probably male, probably straight, probably not seen one since The Sound of Music on BBC 1 after the Queen’s Speech in 1978 – well, don’t send them to Charing Cross Theatre for this show. But that other...

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Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, Irish Baroque Orchestra, Whelan, St George’s Hanover Square review - Handel’s journey of a soul

Imagine if Bach had set Cardinal Benedetto Pamphili’s allegory of Beauty breaking free from Pleasure with the guidance of Time and Enlightenment: he’d probably have hit the spiritual highs. The 21-year-old Handel, at least as this multifaceted...

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The Marriage of Figaro, Welsh National Opera review - no concessions and no holds barred

Drained as they are at present of crucial funds, WNO are managing to put on only two operas this spring, and spaced out to the point where it could hardly be called a season. For their new Peter Grimes we must wait till April. Meanwhile we can...

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The Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera review - long on laughs, short on kerb appeal

Who’s in and who’s not – on the secret, the joke, the relationship, the family, the club? That’s the fulcrum of Joe Hill-Gibbins’ ingeniously simple Figaro for English National Opera. A white box and a row of doors supply the only set to speak of...

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Le nozze di Figaro, The Mozartists, Page, Cadogan Hall review - cogency, intelligence and reverence

Ten years ago, Ian Page launched his and the Mozartists’ (then Classical Opera’s) remarkable endeavour to play music by WA Mozart 250 years after it was written, starting with a programme of material from 1765 by eight-year-old Mozart, and his...

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Timestalker review – she's lost control again

Unlike the controversial Netflix show Baby Reindeer, which challenges many of the same attitudes towards sexual harassment, self-delusion, and stalking’s gender bias, Alice Lowe’s second feature as director, writer, and star does not bill itself as...

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theartsdesk Q&A: Alice Lowe on 'Timestalker' and what women rue through the ages

Before Alice Lowe wrote her first short film scripts, she was, despite success in television and theater, “terrified” of making a full-length feature. “I thought it was some untouchable Holy Grail. That you have to be somehow inducted before you’re...

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Hardenberger, BBC Philharmonic, Storgårds, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - splendour and a trumpeter's voluntary

Two splendid pieces of orchestral virtuosity began and finished the second Saturday concert by the BBC Philharmonic under John Storgårds at the Bridgewater Hall. It was given the title of “Mischief and Magic”, an apt summary.For mischief we had...

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The Magic Flute, Opera North review - a fresh vision of Mozart’s masterpiece

In an autumn season of three revivals, Opera North begin by inviting James Brining, artistic director of Leeds Playhouse, to oversee his own production from five years ago of Mozart and Emanual Schikaneder’s extraordinary musical play. It’s the...

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Bavouzet, Nemecz, McLachlan, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - finish line of a remarkable marathon

“Mozart, made in Manchester”, the project to perform and record an edition of the piano concertos plus all the opera overtures, seemed a distant destination and an unlikely marathon when Manchester Camerata embarked on it eight years ago.But with...

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