WNO
Così fan tutte, Welsh National Opera review - relevance reduced to irrelevanceTuesday, 27 February 2024We can’t do without Così fan tutte; it’s an irresistible masterpiece. But it’s a thorn in the flesh of modern directors, who struggle to find the "relevance" they seem to need in order to get the wretched piece on to the stage.In his new production... Read more... |
Best of 2023: OperaWednesday, 27 December 2023Choosing 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... |
La Traviata, Welsh National Opera review - memorable revival, unforgettable leadSaturday, 23 September 2023It’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... Read more... |
Ainadamar, Welsh National Opera review - hits hard without breaking groundMonday, 11 September 2023I find it hard to know quite what to make of Ainadamar, Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov’s one-act opera about the life and death of the Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who was murdered in unknown circumstances – probably by Nationalist... Read more... |
Candide, Welsh National Opera review - vaut le voyage, just for the visual sideMonday, 26 June 2023If you read the synopsis of Candide - which I strongly advise if you plan a visit to this new WNO production - you may well wonder how it will be possible to get through so much in so short a time. Voltaire’s novella is itself fairly short, but... Read more... |
Blaze of Glory!, Welsh National Opera review - sparkling entertainment up the valleysMonday, 13 March 2023Like certain other opera companies, WNO has leant in recent years towards popular shows of one kind or another. In their case this is not mere pandering to the Valleys coach parties, but a genuine attempt to assert an identity through an exploration... Read more... |
The Magic Flute, Welsh National Opera review - Mozart remodelled and remuddledMonday, 06 March 2023So why not rewrite The Magic Flute with a new text and a heavily reconstructed plot? After all, the original was just a pantomime, albeit one that embodied one or two big issues of the day (1791), but essentially popular theatre with a text by a... Read more... |
The Makropulos Affair, Welsh National Opera review - complexity realised brilliantly on the stageSaturday, 17 September 2022What, anyway, is The Makropulos Case all about? Is it simply about the horrors of unnatural longevity; or does it expose the limitations of the rational mind confronted by the irrational; is it about love of a distorted ideal, like some updated... Read more... |
Jenůfa, Welsh National Opera review - powerful drama with a kitsch tailpieceSunday, 13 March 2022If like me you regard the ending of Janáček’s Jenůfa as one of the most moving scenes in all opera, you might care to consider how it would be possible to deflate it in spite of the best singing imaginable. You might, for instance, bring up a back... Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Welsh National Opera review - fine young cast let down by unhelpful conductingSaturday, 19 February 2022If Don Giovanni is not the greatest opera ever written, it’s at least one of the very, very few that even in erratic performances have the capacity to seem it. There was so much wrong, in detail, with WNO’s revival of John Caird’s now eleven year-... Read more... |
Madam Butterfly, Welsh National Opera review - decent performance, disagreeable contextWednesday, 29 September 2021It’s easy enough to see the difficulty Madam Butterfly places your thinking director in. I share her pain. What the whirring brain will quickly see as a penetrating, or at least surface scratching, study of a whole repertoire of modern obsessions –... Read more... |
The Barber of Seville, Welsh National Opera review - back to work in an old bangerFriday, 10 September 2021Welcome back, WNO! Yes, emphatically, and with a loud hurrah, which is precisely what the company received, and rightly received, from the somewhat arbitrarily scattered first night Millennium Centre audience for their opening revival of The Barber... Read more... |
- 1 of 8
- ››