sat 12/10/2024

Britten

The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera review - Jamesian ambiguities chillingly preserved

At first, you wonder if the peculiar voice of Henry James’s maybe unreliable narrator can be preserved in this production. Surely the outcome is known if we first meet the Governess in an insane asylum bed? Yet whether she was mad or maddened during...

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Prom 68, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Garsington Opera review - eerie beauty sometimes faintly glittering

Some operas shine in the vasts of the Albert Hall, others seem to creep back into their beautiful shells. Glyndebourne’s Carmen blazed, though Bizet never intended his opera for a big theatre, while Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, despite an...

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Prom 37, War Requiem, Clayton, Liverman, Romaniw, LSO, Pappano review - terror and tenderness

This year’s Proms programme initially gave rise to some now-customary sneers about predictability, banality and dumbing down. Well, it all depends on where you sit, and what you hear. And my seats have witnessed one absolute humdinger after another...

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Prom 10, Van der Heijden, BBCSSO, Ryan Wigglesworth review - an engaging and esoteric delight

What is Englishness? Over the last century the answer has changed substantially. Yet last night’s Prom, which – according to the programme – set itself the task of celebrating “all things English” had a very particular answer.This was an England of...

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theartsdesk at the 2024 Aldeburgh Festival - romantic journeys, cosmic hallucinations and wild stomps

It may be unusual to begin festival coverage with praise of the overseer rather than the artists. Yet Roger Wright, who quietly leaves his post at Britten Pears Arts this July after a momentous decade, is no ordinary Chief Executive. I’ve never...

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Classical CDs: Cowhorns, gloves and marching drums

 Britten: Spring Symphony, Sinfonia da Requiem, Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra London Symphony Orchestra/Sir Simon Rattle (LSO Live)Here’s as good a Britten sampler as you’ll find, opening with a truly terrifying account of the early...

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Goldscheider, Spence, Britten Sinfonia, Milton Court review - heroic evening songs and a jolly horn ramble

Milton Court, like its parent Barbican Hall, disconcertingly inflates the sound of larger ensembles and voices. Had there been a conductor for all four pieces in the Britten Sinfonia’s programme - Michael Papadopoulos was there for the two most...

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Elmore String Quartet, Kings Place review - impressive playing from an emerging group

The young Elmore String Quartet, recent graduates of the Royal Northern College, made an impressive Kings Place debut last night with a programme that put music written by composers at a similarly early stage in their careers alongside another’s...

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Death In Venice, Welsh National Opera review - breathtaking Britten

Benjamin Britten’s last opera Death in Venice (1973), adapted from Thomas Mann’s novella of the same name (1912) and the subject of one of Visconti’s later, most celebrated films, explores homoerotic attraction, the nature of beauty and the...

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Gillam, Hallé, Poska, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - an experience of colour and fun

There was a common factor in the superficially disparate elements of this Hallé concert, and it wasn’t just the fact that both soloist and conductor were female. It was an experience of the colours of the music and a sense of enjoyment of what...

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Turning the Screw, King’s Head Theatre review - Britten and the not-so-innocent

David Hemmings was, by his own later admission, a knowing and bumptious boy when Britten cast him as the ill-fated Miles in his operatic adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. The upheaval Hemmings wrought in Aldeburgh’s Crag House when...

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Albert Herring, Opera North review - immersive and intimate fun

Reviving Giles Havergal’s 2013 production from its “Festival of Britten” of that year, Opera North have an Albert Herring that’s both immersive and intimate, to quote their own publicity.Immersive because it was designed specifically for the...

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