Opera Reviews
Fidelio, Insula Orchestra, Barbican review - truth and justice brought to lightFriday, 13 May 2022
Thanks to the pandemic, the planned tidal surge of Fidelio productions never quite happened during Beethoven’s anniversary year of 2020. Instead, the birthday’s boy’s sole opera – beset by glitches and re-thinks ever since its creation – has rolled on intermittent waves into houses and halls around the world. 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, they are both facing in the same direction – each looking back into the musical past. Read more... |
Serse, The English Concert, St Martin-in-the-Fields review - star turns from five remarkable womenFriday, 06 May 2022
You know great singing when you hear it. In Handel, for me, that was when Lucy Crowe took over a Göttingen gala back in 2013; in Mozart, most recently, it came from Emily D’Angelo making her Royal Opera debut in La clemenza di Tito. Last night, in an opera of genius from first note to last, both shone, but neither eclipsed other performances or took the spotlight from the ravishingly beautiful playing of Harry Bicket’s English Concert. Read more... |
Lohengrin, Royal Opera review - a timely return to warzone BrabantWednesday, 20 April 2022
David Alden’s Lohengrin is back at Covent Garden for a first revival. The defining image the first time round, in 2018, was of the ending, a political rally for King Henry’s regime, with Lohengrin and the swan as its icons. That felt crude – a two-dimensional morality, and tangential to the story. Read more... |
The Handmaid's Tale, English National Opera review - a red-hot classic for our timesSaturday, 09 April 2022
However familiar you are with The Handmaid’s Tale in Margaret Atwood’s novel or its TV adaptation, you might still be knocked sideways by the impact it makes as an opera. Poul Ruders’s music plunges us viscerally into its emotional world, where his ambitious adaptation, premiered in 2000 and first heard in the UK three years later, packs one hell of a punch, its intensity terrifying and relentless. Read more... |
Oberto, Chelsea Opera Group, Cadogan Hall review - Verdi’s first opera bounces into lifeTuesday, 05 April 2022
There are quite a few dull patches in the early Verdi operas that aren’t Nabucco, Ernani or Macbeth, so I wasn’t expecting so very much from the 26-year-old composer’s first shot. That was without taking into account how spiritedly the ad hoc Chelsea Opera Group Orchestra would play for conductor Matthew Scott Rogers, whizzing this shortish opera along but never breathlessly, and how well the main roles would be taken. Read more... |
The Gondoliers, Scottish Opera, Hackney Empire review - G&S con amoreSunday, 03 April 2022
Having sung the Gondoliers’ Duet with an Iranian tenor who’d been a big pop star in his native land, I know that internationalism hit performances of the Savoy operas some time ago (this superb but all-white ensemble admittedly doesn't follow the general phenomenon). The master composer and the verbal wit may not have travelled the world musically speaking, apart from a famous little excursion into Japonisme, but we can safely acclaim them as lifelong Europeans. Read more... |
Rigoletto, Opera North review - Covid shocks, debut pleasuresFriday, 25 March 2022
Beware of joining the Duke of Mantua’s sleazy feast in time of Covid too late, as I did on Opera North’s Newcastle leg of its Verdi journey. You may find more than a couple of the distinguished guests on stage have fallen sick – three, no less, on Wednesday night, including the Rigoletto and the Gilda, as well as the main conductor. But if you’re lucky, as I also was, you may discover unanticipated compensations. Read more... |
Opera Triple Bill, Royal Academy Opera review - three centuries of female sufferingThursday, 24 March 2022
When we first meet Sarah, the teenage heroine of Freya Waley-Cohen’s WITCH, she’s alone in her bedroom Googling “How to stop feeling shitty?”. She’s being bullied and sexualised by boys at school, but she could just as easily be asking on behalf of any one of her operatic forebears: Manon; Carmen; Armida; Alcina; Butterfly; Elvira. Read more... |
The Miserly Knight / Mavra, Scottish Opera review - a bold double act in the heart of ScotlandWednesday, 23 March 2022
To stage a double bill of unusual 20th century Russian operas would be brave at the best of times. To do so in the Fair City of Perth amply demonstrates Scottish Opera’s laudable commitment to extend its influence beyond the Edinburgh-Glasgow cultural axis. Read more... |
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