opera directors
The Encore, Opera Holland Park review - stylish return for a squad of old friendsMonday, 10 August 2020
As Dvořák’s "Song to the Moon" from Rusalka rose to its impassioned climax, Natalya Romaniw had to battle a helicopter thumping overhead. The helicopter lost (well, of course it did). As Nardus Williams and David Butt Phillip disappeared into... Read more... |
theartsdesk Q&A: Director Sir Jonathan MillerThursday, 28 November 2019
Doctor, writer, sculptor, curator, comedian, presenter and director, Sir Jonathan Miller (1934-2019) was one of the mighty cultural and intellectual omnivores of our age. To those of a musical or theatrical bent, however, Miller was above all one of... Read more... |
Anna Bolena, Longborough Festival Opera review - Henry VIII's court becomes a sexualised death cultMonday, 24 June 2019
Divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived. Anne Boleyn is number two on the list, so anyone who can remember even that much Tudor history can guess that Donizetti’s Anna Bolena is not going to end well. The overture has hardly ended... Read more... |
Dead Dog in a Suitcase (and other love songs), Brighton Festival 2019 review - a feverishly foul-mouthed musical comedyThursday, 09 May 2019
Five years ago this Kneehigh Theatre production caused a stir with its vibrant modern retelling of John Gay’s 18th century satirical classic, The Beggar’s Opera. It’s currently on tour again and it’s easy to see why a revival was greenlit. It’s a... Read more... |
Idomeneo, English Touring Opera review – honest excellenceSaturday, 09 March 2019
Selfish, cunning, cynical, the older generation has screwed up the world with aggression abroad and dishonesty at home. Can their children make it good again? This family drama of transgression and reparation threads through Idomeneo, the opera that... Read more... |
L'heure espagnole, Mid Wales Opera review - Ravel goes like clockworkSaturday, 01 December 2018
Mid Wales Opera makes small-scale touring look fun – even when you suspect that, behind the scenes, it really isn’t. Barely 24 hours before this performance of their current production of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole, and 11 dates into their current 16... Read more... |
Porgy and Bess, English National Opera review - strength in depth on Catfish RowFriday, 12 October 2018
After exhausting years of financial and artistic crisis-management at the Coliseum, English National Opera urgently needed an ironclad, feelgood success. This season’s opener, a somewhat idiosyncratic take on Strauss’s Salome, was unlikely to fit... Read more... |
Ariadne auf Naxos, Opera Holland Park - stylish staging, world-class singingWednesday, 18 July 2018
"When the new god approaches, we surrender, struck dumb". Especially if, for the singer of those words, popular entertainer Zerbinetta, the “new god” takes the shape of same-sex love. Director and designer Antony McDonald locates the real “mystery... Read more... |
Prom 5, Pelléas et Mélisande, Glyndebourne review - for the ears, not the eyesWednesday, 18 July 2018
What a fabulous score Pelléas et Mélisande is, and what a joy to be able to hear it in a concert performance without the distraction of some over-sophisticated director’s self-communings. Well, if only. What last night’s Prom in fact served up was a... Read more... |
Ariadne auf Naxos, Longborough Festival review - appetising energy and witSaturday, 14 July 2018
Much as I love Strauss’s Ariadne in its final form, I have a sneaking nostalgia for the original version (attached to Hofmannsthal’s adaptation of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme), which had Zerbinetta and her companions popping up after the... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Paris - following in the footsteps of GounodSunday, 24 June 2018
It’s a truism that history is written by the victors, but nowhere in classical music is the argument made more persuasively than in the legacy and reputation of Charles Gounod. In a year in which you can hardly move for Bernstein and Debussy-related... Read more... |
La finta semplice, Classical Opera, QEH review - consummate musicianship stokes early MozartThursday, 07 June 2018
You can always be sure of impeccable casting and spirited playing as Ian Page takes his Classical Opera through Mozart year by year. Just don't expect more than the glimmer of genius to come in 1768, though. It doesn't matter in those admirable... Read more... |
