ROH
Raven Girl, Royal Ballet/ Witch-Hunt, Bern Ballett/ The Great Gatsby, Northern BalletSaturday, 25 May 2013
Ballet is telling stories again. Last night Wayne McGregor’s debut as a narrator followed hot on the heels of Cathy Marston’s Witch-Hunt for Bern Ballett, both in the Royal Opera House complex, and Northern Ballet’s visit to London with David Nixon’... Read more... |
Nabucco, Royal OperaTuesday, 16 April 2013
"Oh, wretched old man! You are but the shadow of the king”, sings Plácido Domingo’s Nebuchadnezzar about himself in Lear-like abjection before his Goneril-Reganish daughter (the flame-throwing Liudmyla Monastyrska). It’s only true of this brief... Read more... |
Sir Colin Davis: 'He simply knew how Mozart should go'Tuesday, 16 April 2013
Colin was an enormous influence in my youth and I’d like to share some memories of those days. It was over 60 years ago, on a Sunday afternoon in May 1952, that I attended a concert performance of The Marriage of Figaro given by Chelsea Opera... Read more... |
Bolshoi full casting up as box office opensSaturday, 06 April 2013
General booking for the Bolshoi Ballet's Covent Garden season this summer opens on Tuesday (9 April), and the company has at last announced its intended casting. However, it should always be borne in mind that, as Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte... Read more... |
The Metamorphosis, Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 19 March 2013
“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from a troubled dream, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous insect.” In one of the most famous opening lines in literature, Franz Kafka gives birth to a startling hallucinogenic premise. And... Read more... |
Will ballet public boycott the Bolshoi?Sunday, 17 March 2013
Is the Bolshoi Ballet going to have trouble selling its tickets for its London tour as a result of the acid attack on its artistic director Sergei Filin? A range of opinion is erupting among ballet-goers dismayed not only by the attack but by the... Read more... |
Ballet Black, Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera HouseSaturday, 02 March 2013
Ballet Black open their eighth Linbury Studio Theatre season with a quadruple bill of new works which looks promising on paper but less so in actuality. The evening begins with Robert Binet’s EGAL, the title being a (now obsolete) Middle English... Read more... |
Eugene Onegin, Royal OperaTuesday, 05 February 2013
Studying Russian for three years to read Pushkin’s verse-novel Eugene Onegin in the original doesn’t guarantee the finest interpretation of Tchaikovsky’s equally great lyric homage. Yet it certainly seems to have focused the imagination of Covent... Read more... |
Harlekin, Derevo, Linbury Studio TheatreThursday, 17 January 2013
I've always keenly anticipated Derevo. A rare sight in London, they are the must-catch company in a singular branch of mime theatre - some would call it clowning, from an oblique, dark place of visions, fears and childlike imaginings. They are a... Read more... |
The Firebird/In the Night/Raymonda, Royal BalletSunday, 30 December 2012
It’s hard to work out why the Royal Ballet has not indulged in more Jerome Robbins, so eminently suited does it seem for their taste for emotional understatement. In the Night had a few outings in the 1970s, and has only now been revived, possibly... Read more... |
10 Questions for Opera singer Rolando VillazónMonday, 17 December 2012
Few singers provoke more debate than Rolando Villazón. His off-piste projects - from his Romantic exploration of the Baroque to his spell as a talent contest judge - have been much discussed over the years. By comparison, there's something strangely... Read more... |
Royal Opera House chief Tony Hall to the BBC - now what?Thursday, 22 November 2012
So Tony Hall moves from heading the Royal Opera House to taking over the BBC as its new Director-General. I can't for a moment imagine a rerun of that crucial mini-conversation between Helen Boaden and George Entwistle over the Jimmy Savile... Read more... |
