WNO
stephen.walsh
In fact Giuseppe Frigeni’s production and sets have already been seen in Bordeaux, so perhaps it’s more that the novelty by now has worn off. Either way, it’s a miserable affair, devoid of movement or dramatic tension, obscure in its characterisation and motivation, poorly lit and self-evidently costumed not just for a different cast, but for a different race of men and women.It has some of the worst singing I’ve encountered on the professional stage for many a year; and where the singing is good, it mostly comes from the wrong kind of vocal chords. In Meistersinger the orchestra played like Read more ...
stephen.walsh
Watching and hearing this revival of WNO’s now eight-year-old production of Verdi’s Rigoletto, it’s hard to remember he composed it only a year or two before La Traviata, that most psychologically believable of all his operas. In Rigoletto nothing makes sense: the hunchback’s pretty daughter, her apparently willing incarceration, Rigoletto’s hoodwinking (literally) into helping her abduction, her final self-sacrifice – all palpable nonsense. Yet the piece never seriously fails. In a sense it’s music drama at its purest: the plot is an appendage to the music, what Wagner later called “deeds of Read more ...