ENO
David Benedict
“Then I’ll kiss her so she’ll know.” At the sound of his ringing voice, the girls part to reveal him standing there, a hapless monument of rumpled charm. The audience relaxes in pleasure as an easeful actor joyfully shows what you can do with a command of textual detail, physicality and, above all, character. The trouble is, the excellent Gavin Spokes is playing not one of the leads but the supporting role of Mr Snow. The downside of a performance this assured is that it shows you exactly what has been missing until now.To a degree, this is a gamble that has paid off – the emphasis is on the Read more ...
David Nice
It's time again for surrealist charades at the nothing-doing mansion. Christopher Alden's Handel is back at ENO, making inconsequentiality seem wondrous. Christian Curnyn's conducting sets the tone, with orchestral playing as light as air, and a new cast – with one singer from the previous set switching roles – conceals its art behind what seems like the easiest and most organic of singing and acting.What a relief it is after aimless shenanigans over at the Royal Opera to return to a production that's so sure- (and light-) footed. No one should grumble about the frivolous setting Read more ...
David Nice
After a Royal Opera performance of Birtwistle's The Minotaur, a friend spotted Hans Werner Henze in the foyer and had the temerity to ask that annoying question "What did you think?" "Very competent and extremely well performed," came the reply. Which is the measure of Ryan Wigglesworth's Shakespeare adaptation at ENO. Every UK premiere of a new British opera can be sure of one thing - a first-rate cast of English-speaking singers. Perhaps the real surprise here was the debut of that great actor Rory Kinnear as a director: clear and sure-footed throughout.Clarity is a quality, too, of Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
This was supposed to be a triumphant return – one final encore for the production so good that audiences just couldn’t let it go. Instead, this 13th revival of Jonathan Miller’s Mafia Rigoletto seems like an apology. The designs are handsome as ever, the concept as neat, but the details of both direction and music are so scrappy and scattered that the show feels more like a basement clear-out than a loving restoration. Raw, gritty brass launched the Prelude harshly on opening night, setting the tone for an evening where beauty was consistently the last, rather than then first, Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
The Bergen Philharmonic recently appointed Edward Gardner as its Chief Conductor – ENO’s loss is Bergen’s gain. He is contracted to 2021, so this is the start of a long relationship. On the strength of this concert, the London leg of a UK tour, it is an ideal match. Gardner (pictured below by Benjamin Ealovega) is a dynamic conductor, but one with an impressive ability to accommodate performing traditions. The Bergen Philharmonic recently celebrated its 250th anniversary, so it has plenty of those. The orchestra’s distinctive flavour was much in evidence here, but so too the conductor’s Read more ...
David Nice
It was the best and worst of years for English National Opera. Best, because principals, chorus and orchestra seem united in acclaiming their Music Director of 14 months, Mark Wigglesworth, for his work at a level most had only dreamed of (“from the bottom up,” said a cellist, contrasting it with the top-down approach of predecessor Edward Gardner). Worst, because he stayed true to his principle of only working with a full-time company, and when the chorus unexpectedly accepted a nine-month contract, announced his departure.No-one wants a great company’s demise, but despite the announcement Read more ...
David Nice
It should have been unmodified rapture: a gathering of English National Opera team members old and new celebrating the doyen of the company's best-selling productions. And, as has always happened with the artistic side of the company, this loving homage to Sir Jonathan Miller sounds like a triumph. Critics weren't invited to the gala - statement, not sour grapes; this was a charity event, after all - and the final rehearsal was closed, though not apparently at the wish of anyone performing. The circumstances, though, tell us a lot about a company divided.Now, perhaps, is not the time for well Read more ...
David Nice
After a day of sheer pain, would it be endless night or cathartic relief at ENO? Both, must be the answer, and much more, all at once. Iconoclastic Frank Wedekind's "earth-spirit" Lulu, exploited as a street-child but now able to turn the tables for a while on male bourgeois weakness, lives through one horrible situation after another before dying at the hands of Jack the Ripper, but Alban Berg's never merely atonal score gives such transcendent warmth to the spell she casts just by being.Has it ever sounded more grounded in its beauty, or more closely connected with the stage shenanigans, Read more ...
David Nice
No-one can easily replace Mark Wigglesworth as Music Director of English National Opera: ask any of the musicians working there and you'll find they're all heartbroken. That said, they could not have chosen a nicer man or a better all-round musician than Martyn Brabbins.In the UK we know him best for his concert work and especially for his espousal of the unfamiliar, from the debateably terrible Havergal Brian "Gothic" Symphony - proof of Brabbins' capability in mustering the hugest possible forces - to a re-evaluation of Tippett's Second Symphony as an absolute masterpiece. In opera, not so Read more ...
David Nice
Pace-perfect musical articulation and meaningful surprises in the direction: both were to be expected after the conductor-generated sludge and the production overkill of the new Royal Opera Così fan tutte. Mark Wigglesworth has form in Mozart at ENO, with the best of Cosìs way back and a bewitching revival of The Magic Flute this year. Last night he and the ENO Orchestra put no foot wrong. Richard Jones, his dream first-time collaborator, offered the expected twists and symmetries though perhaps not all the connections in between. But that's the eternal problem of Don Giovanni for you.Much Read more ...
Helen Wallace
Some enchanted afternoon in Camden Town… the Proms returned to the Roundhouse after four decades with a dreamlike fusion of sound, space and light. Ron Arad’s Curtain Call – a 360° installation of 5,600 sillicon rods – encircled the London Sinfonietta and audience in its luminescent embrace, a haze of microtonal music slinking through a sequence of glimmering projections.The programme built towards György Ligeti’s Ramifications, an indelible masterpiece of the gauziest microtonal weave, and part-inspiration for Georg Friedrich Haas’s Open Spaces II (2007). In this ravishing work Haas also Read more ...
Linda Esther Gray
When I sang Isolde to Alberto’s Tristan at English National Opera all those years ago, it was a joy to hear such wonderful tenor sounds in my ears, my heart and my soul. It was always difficult for him to memorise his work and up until the first night I wasn’t quite sure what was going to happen. Yet when we went into that other place of performing he became Tristan and we travelled, on the waves of his beautiful sounds, to places I have seldom been.He was a very experienced singer who had sung with many great sopranos but I always got the feeling he was enjoying his time with me as much as Read more ...