ROH
The Tales of Hoffmann, Royal Opera review - three-headed monster feels baggier than everFriday, 08 November 2024
Having all but sunk one seemingly unassailable opéra comique, Bizet’s Carmen, director Damiano Michieletto goes some way to helping out another with so many problems. Not far enough, alas, but the chosen edition, with its reams of recitative (mostly... Read more... |
The Mad Hatter's Tea Party, ZooNation, Linbury Theatre review - a joyous celebration of differentnessTuesday, 10 September 2024
The Mad Hatter gets it about right when he tells Alice: “You’re entirely bonkers… but all the best people are.” Kate Prince takes this line and runs with it in her riotous but surprisingly sweet and often moving hip hop take on Lewis Carroll’s 1865... Read more... |
Der fliegende Holländer, Royal Opera review - compellingly lucid with an austere visual beautyFriday, 01 March 2024
The shadow of Nosferatu hangs heavily over Tim Albery’s powerfully austere staging of Wagner’s opera of desire and damnation, which returns to the Royal Opera House 15 years after it premiered there. Bryn Terfel’s Dutchman is a subtly vampiric... 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... |
Ruination, Linbury Theatre review - Medea gets a makeoverWednesday, 07 December 2022
At a time when every other theatre is offering an alternative Christmas show, what to make of the Royal Opera House’s first collaboration with Lost Dog, aka director-choreographer Ben Duke, who has come up with the most un-merry topic imaginable?... Read more... |
Mavra/Pierrot Lunaire, Linbury Theatre review - operatic madness tempered with plenty of methodFriday, 13 May 2022
A blink-and-you’ll-miss-it domestic farce and a fever-dream fantasy of a song-cycle: Stravinsky’s Mavra (1922) and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (1912) make for an unexpected double-bill. But, if the two stand slightly awkwardly next to one another,... Read more... |
Swan Lake, Royal Ballet review - a magnificent revivalSaturday, 05 March 2022
In a week that saw the Royal Opera House lit up in the colours of the Ukrainian flag and its orchestra playing the Ukrainian national anthem, many theatres and concert halls found ways to express their sympathy for that country’s desperate plight.... Read more... |
Ariodante, Royal Opera online review – stylish, but confinedMonday, 23 November 2020
“After black and gloomy night, the sun shines all the brighter,” sings hero Ariodante after a life-threatening bout of jealousy nearly scuppers a royal wedding. There’s a snag in Handel’s dramaturgy: all that sunshine in preparation for the nuptials... Read more... |
The Bright Stream, Bolshoi Ballet review - a gem of a comedyThursday, 08 August 2019
Why is Alexei Ratmansky one of the greatest living choreographers of classical ballet? Well partly because, as last night's performance of The Bright Stream by the Bolshoi at the Royal Opera House proved, he can do comedy. To adapt the famous... Read more... |
War and Peace, Welsh National Opera, Royal Opera House - bold epic weakened by loosely-directed characterisationsWednesday, 24 July 2019
On the UK's biggest day of shame, it was some relief to tap in to the fury of the Russian people at a much greater national degradation (Napoleon's invasion in 1812, Hitler's in 1941). Though it works even better at the end of the first, "Natasha... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Pet Shop Boys - Inner SanctumTuesday, 23 April 2019
Pet Shop Boys are never shy of producing stylishly conceived fan mementos. Coming not long after Faber & Faber’s hardback collection of Neil Tennant’s lyrics, this four-disc set is just such a slice of lovingly rendered memorabilia. After well... Read more... |
Salome, Royal Opera review – lurid staging still packs a punchTuesday, 09 January 2018
David McVicar may seem too gentle a soul for the lurid drama of Strauss's Salome, but his production, here returning to Covent Garden for a third revival, packs a punch. He gives us plenty of sex and violence – or at least nudity and blood – but... Read more... |
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