Glyndebourne
Ariadne auf Naxos, Glyndebourne Festival OperaSunday, 19 May 2013
The Major-Domo promises fireworks during the Prologue of Strauss and Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Katharina Thoma, the director of Glyndebourne’s new staging, drops a bombshell - actually several bombshells. Glyndebourne’s wartime history (as a... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Kate Lindsey and Katharina Thoma on Glyndebourne's Ariadne auf NaxosSaturday, 18 May 2013
What’s the perfect Glyndebourne opera? Mozart, of course, must have first and second places with Le nozze di Figaro – Michael Grandage’s lively production of country-house mayhem is revived again this season – and Così fan tutte. Then comes Amadeus’... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Britten, Billy Mayerl, ProkofievSaturday, 30 March 2013
Britten: Billy Budd John Mark Ainsley, Jacques Imbraillo, Matthew Rose, Philip Ens, Glyndebourne Chorus, London Philharmonic Orchestra/Sir Mark Elder (Glyndebourne)I missed this staging of Britten’s Billy Budd, first performed in May 2010. I’m... Read more... |
Imago, Glyndebourne OperaMonday, 11 March 2013
Imago, Glyndebourne’s latest Community Opera exercise, putting the cap on 25 years of pioneering educational outreach, is one of those operas where you need to read the programme synopsis first. Or maybe not. Its complications are outweighed by... Read more... |
Ravel Double Bill, Glyndebourne Festival OperaSunday, 05 August 2012
Ravel composed only two operas, both one-acters, widely separated in time, superficially very different, but both in a way about the same thing: naughtiness. In L’Heure espagnole (1911), the clockmaker’s wife, Conceptión, entertains a succession of... Read more... |
The Fairy Queen, Glyndebourne Festival OperaSaturday, 21 July 2012
Purcell certainly doesn’t make it easy for the champions of English opera. His beloved Dido and Aeneas is barely half an evening’s entertainment, so condensed is its tragedy, and the dense political satire of Dryden’s King Arthur text all but... Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Glyndebourne Festival OperaSaturday, 30 June 2012
It's amazing how long it takes to realise that we're in the 1970s in Michael Grandage's new Glyndebourne production of Le nozze di Figaro. The mansion house suggests that we're in the 18th century. The light and latticework says we're in Mozart's... Read more... |
La Bohème, Glyndebourne Festival OperaThursday, 07 June 2012
It has romantic sweep but is held firm by zealous attention to detail and while it’s hugely expansive of gesture, it’s never generalised. I’m talking about Kirill Karabits’ conducting of La bohème at Glyndebourne. I wish I could say the same... Read more... |
La Cenerentola, Glyndebourne Festival OperaThursday, 24 May 2012
Rossini's La Cenerentola is not an opera that I'd normally recommend to anyone with even half a brain. It takes the simple if mildly nauseating little tale of Cinderella, pads it out with parental abuse and drawn out cliffhangers, and ends in a pass... Read more... |
The Cunning Little Vixen, Glyndebourne Festival OperaMonday, 21 May 2012
Glyndebourne nature, it seems, runs along as smoothly as the much discussed new wind turbine on the hill. Within the theatre, though, all is flux: director Melly Still and Vladimir Jurowski, conducting an incandescent London Philharmonic Orchestra,... Read more... |
2011: Welsh Warblers and Wagner Gone WestThursday, 29 December 2011
Living and working 150 miles from London, one either clutches at local straws or gets on a train. I’ve done both in 2011, as usual, but in a way the local is more stimulating, not because it’s better (ha!) but because there’s so much less of it.... Read more... |
Don Pasquale, Glyndebourne on TourMonday, 24 October 2011
Who would have thought that in a comic opera by Donizetti, least orchestra-indulgent of Italian composers, the conductor could be paramount? While Mariame Clément's production frisks around the soft edges of the stock opera buffa plot - sometimes... Read more... |
