ENO
Mary, Queen of Scots, English National Opera review - heroic effort for an overcooked history lessonMonday, 17 February 2025
Genius doesn't always tally with equal opportunities, to paraphrase Doris Lessing. Opera houses have a duty to put on new works by women composers; sometimes an instant classic emerges. But to revive a music drama that hardly made waves back in 1977... Read more... |
The Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera review - long on laughs, short on kerb appealThursday, 06 February 2025
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... Read more... |
The Pirates of Penzance, English National Opera review - fresh energy in clear-sighted G&SSaturday, 07 December 2024
“Comedy is a serious thing,” quoth David Garrick. Gilbert and Sullivan knew it, and so does Mike Leigh, having bequeathed to ENO a clear and unfussy Pirates of Penzance. It does renewed honour to Victorian genius in Sarah Tipple’s freshly-cast... Read more... |
The Elixir of Love, English National Opera review - a tale of two halvesSaturday, 16 November 2024
Sparkling Italian comic opera might have been just the tonic at this time. Trouble is, the bar was set so high recently by Wexford Festival Opera’s Le convenienze e inconvenienze teatrali, aka Viva la Mamma, that this better known, less malleable if... Read more... |
Rigoletto, English National Opera review - another hit for Miller's MobThursday, 31 October 2024
How we used to mock those stuck-in-the-mud opera houses that wheeled out the same moth-eaten production of some box-office favourite decade after decade. Well, Jonathan Miller’s 1950s New York mafiosi version of Verdi’s Rigoletto first arrived on... Read more... |
The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera review - Jamesian ambiguities chillingly preservedSaturday, 12 October 2024
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... Read more... |
Suor Angelica, English National Opera review - isolated one-acter lacks emotional inscapingSaturday, 28 September 2024
Puccini elevated the operatic tearjerker to tragic status in three masterpieces: La bohème, Madama Butterfly and Suor Angelica, rivalling the other two in intensity despite its brevity. Its special atmosphere works best as the central part of a... Read more... |
Jenůfa, English National Opera review - searing new cast in precise revivalThursday, 14 March 2024
Face scarred, baby murdered – both crimes committed by those closest to her – village girl Jenůfa rises again with extraordinary strength of will. Of all affirmative endings in opera, Janáček’s has to be the most moving, and all the more so in this... Read more... |
The Magic Flute, English National Opera review - return of an enchanted eveningThursday, 29 February 2024
Trials by fire and water pale in comparison with trials by Arts Council England. English National Opera’s long torment has lately involved redundancy notices issued mid-performance and the enforcement of a sub-standard contract for chorus and... Read more... |
The Handmaid's Tale, English National Opera review - last chance saloon for sub-Atwood baggy monsterFriday, 02 February 2024
Never underestimate the enduring power of a great story over an unwieldy operatic setting. Few of us who saw the first ENO production of The Handmaid’s Tale back in 2003 thought the work stood much chance of revival. Yet Margaret Atwood’s dystopian... Read more... |
Best of 2023: OperaWednesday, 27 December 2023
Choosing a limited best seems almost meaningless when even simply the seven operatic experiences I've relished in the run-up to Christmas (nothing seasonal) deserve a place in the sun. But in a year which has seen Arts Council devastation versus... Read more... |
Iolanthe, English National Opera review - still gorgeous but ever so slightly less funny than beforeWednesday, 11 October 2023
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... Read more... |
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