fri 11/10/2024

Verdi

Rigoletto, Welsh National Opera review - back to what they do best

We were of course lucky to get this new WNO Rigoletto at all. If it weren’t for the fact that, in the end, the company’s wonderful chorus and orchestra couldn’t wait to get back to doing what they do best, and accepted a modest glow of light at the...

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La traviata, Royal Opera review - a charismatic soprano in a serviceable revival

Later this autumn Richard Eyre’s La Traviata celebrates its 30th birthday. Not bad going for the director’s first ever foray into opera – a genre he admitted holding an “unreasonable prejudice against”.And perhaps that’s the secret to this Royal...

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Verdi's Requiem / Capriccio, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - words, music, judgement

The Philharmonia’s residency was the centrepiece of the Edinburgh International Festival’s final weekend, and it’s right that the orchestra should be the focus because they were consistently the finest thing about both their Verdi Requiem and their...

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Prom 6, Verdi's Requiem, BBCNOW, Bancroft review - running the emotional gamut

Returning after ten months to the unique vasts of Albert’s colosseum, especially for a Verdi Requiem as powerful as this and a packed hall, felt like a rebirth. There was immediate purging in the focused whispers of the first “Requiem aeternam”s,...

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Simon Boccanegra, Hallé, Elder, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - thrilling, magnificent exploration

If ever more evidence were needed of Sir Mark Elder’s untiring zest for exploration and love of the thrill of live opera performance, it was this ground-breaking collaborative event with Opera Rara – a performance coupled to a new studio recording...

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Verdi's Requiem, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Pappano, Parco della Musica, Rome review - peak poignancy

Antonio Pappano is at a hinge in his illustrious career, as the exciting transfer across London from Covent Garden to the London Symphony Orchestra proceeds, and the word "Emeritus" is added to his title as Music Director of his home-from-home in...

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theartsdesk in Ravenna - Riccardo Muti passes on a lifetime's operatic wisdom

Does “the practice of opera singing in Italy” need help from UNESCO, which has newly inscribed it on the “Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity”? Italian opera is surely immensely popular worldwide. But when it comes to...

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Un ballo in maschera, Chelsea Opera Group, Cadogan Hall review - Italianate vitality, if not much finesse

Eighteenth century Sweden is the nominal setting for A Masked Ball, but its essence is a unique mixture of Italian testosterone and French opéra-comique elegance. If this concert performance brought it closer to the indiscriminate vitality of early...

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Falstaff, Opera North review - going green and having fun

There’s a charmingly retro feel to Opera North’s new Falstaff, which comes from it being done as part of their new “green”, i.e. ecologically conscious, season.Leslie Travers’ set is made of bits from other productions and – most notably – shows...

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La Traviata, Welsh National Opera review - memorable revival, unforgettable lead

It’s always tempting, at curtain-up in La Traviata, to settle back, half-close one’s eyes, and soak up the familiar without the anxiety of the new. Not this time you won’t. David McVicar’s lavish 2009 text-true staging is being revived with a...

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Don Carlo, Royal Opera review - Lise Davidsen soars above routine

Not a good start. The tenor (Brian Jagde) walks downstage and sings loudly, if securely, to the audience: hardly a characterisation of an idealistic young Infante meditating on love. The next voice, the Page’s, is barely heard (Ella Taylor gets...

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Il trovatore, Royal Opera review - heaven and hell

The trouble with Trovatore, Verdi’s sometimes barrel-organish, slightly middle-aged troubadour, isn’t so much the silly shocker of a plot, triggered by a gypsy so crazed with vengeance that she throws her own baby on a bonfire by mistake, as the...

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