Opera
David Nice
Latvia is fighting fit. The recent elections did not see the expected victory for the pro-Kremlin Harmony party; support for the European Union and NATO will be well represented. Last week the feisty Lavtian Ambassador to the UK, Baiba Braže, landed a perfectly diplomatic punch on the smug mug of our latest apology for a Foreign Secretary, taking former Remainer Hunt to task for his outrageous parallels between the EU and the Soviet gulag by reminding him how Latvia had suffered under the USSR and how eagerly it has adopted the best European values. And last night's second Royal Festival Hall Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Baroque repertoire doesn’t seem to register on most British opera company’s schedules these days, so it is good to see ETO devoting their autumn season to Handel, Purcell and Bach, with some additions from Carissimi and Gesualdo for good measure. Their first production, Handel’s Radamisto, is a good choice for touring, a compact six-hander with strong characters and great music. The staging, by General Director James Conway, with designs by Adam Wiltshire, is colourful and atmospheric, though clearly on a scale for touring. And musical standards are generally high, with a strong and engaging Read more ...
Robert Beale
Two days after announcing his appointment as their next chief conductor (he takes the reins officially next summer, in time for the Proms), by remarkable good fortune the Manchester-based BBC Philharmonic was able to present Omer Meir Wellber as the conductor of their second Bridgewater Hall series concert. It was a harbinger of things to come – he said as much in the talk before the concert – in that he’s an experienced opera conductor and wants to bring the spirit of the stage, and probably the reality of more operatic performances, to the Philharmonic’s programming.So his Mozart opener – Read more ...
David Nice
Her special claim to fame was the most luminous pianissimo in the business, but that often went hand in velvet glove with fabulous breath control and a peerless sense of bel canto line. To know Maria de Montserrat Viviana Concepción Caballé i Folch, born in Barcelona 85 years ago, was clearly to love her. I never did (know her, that is), and I only saw her once, in a 1986 recital at the Edinburgh Festival. By then she was careful with her resources, but the subtly jewelled programme delivered on its own terms.There was a glimpse of the famous good nature, too. Here it is in an unexpected Read more ...
Boyd Tonkin
“War Horse has a lot to answer for,” grumbled, or joked, my neighbour as the white-draped and white-faced puppet of the Queen of Carthage lay crumpled on the floor at the close of Thomas Guthrie’s semi-staged production of Dido and Aeneas. Well, not just War Horse. Cape Town’s master-puppeteers Adrian Kohler and Basil Jones had, with their Handspring Puppet Company, mounted a dozen trail-blazing shows in collaboration with the South African artist William Kentridge before the National Theatre’s equine blockbuster turned their uncannily expressive creations into a global cult.How odd, Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
And so it ends. Flames give way to water, and as the Rhinemaidens resume their naked dance we come full circle – quite literally in Keith Warner’s Wagner Ring – back where we began, on the banks of the Rhine. Once again we find ourselves on the brink – but of what? A young woman framed in the giant ring that descends in the music’s final moments suggests a hopeful new beginning, a new generation of heroes. But with the old gods burnt up in the fire, who or what will take their place?Third time round, and still things remain – for good or ill – ambiguous in Warner’s staging. Admittedly in Read more ...
David Nice
Siegfried is usually the problem with Siegfried. Even Stuart Skelton, top Tristan and currently singing an acclaimed Siegmund in this last revival of Keith Warner's rattlebag Ring, won't touch the longest, toughest heroic-tenor role in Wagner, the protagonist of his third opera in the tetralogy. Stefan Vinke, singing his 100th Siegfried during this Royal Opera run, is a true hero, still sounding as fresh as - well, not exactly a daisy, more like a magnolia grandiflora. His stamina gave us not only the most thrilling of climaxes to Act One, where the fearless lad reforges his father's Read more ...
David Nice
Sibling incest among the symbolic clutter of the Royal Opera Ring on Wednesday, last night necrophilia and a bit more incest – mother and daughter this time, courtesy of the director's imagination – in a stone-cold ENO Salome. Adena Jacobs' credentials were promising, not least her time at Sydney's cutting-edge Belvoir Theatre. That this would be a Salome unlike any other was a given. But throw out the essential interplay between the characters of Wilde's ornate play as filtered through the insidious colours of Richard Strauss's ever-amazing score, and you have to find an equally feverish Read more ...
Peter Quantrill
Perched alone and fearful in her hut as the curtain rises on Die Walküre, Sieglinde clutches and then throws aside a grimy teddy-bear. Story time is over. The nymphs and gold and bickering gods all belong in the past, to the ‘preliminary evening’ of Das Rheingold, or so Sieglinde might think. The real drama of Wagner's Ring begins here. It’s a nice metaphor, one of many that Keith Warner throws into the pot for his Royal Opera staging on its final appearance.Other false comforts and dreams of dominion bind the Victorian age of the Ring’s composition to subsequent eras of industrialised Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
Keith Warner’s production of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen was first seen at Covent Garden between 2004 and 2006, and is now back for a third and final series of full runs, chiefly to catch the Brünnhilde of Nina Stemme in three of the operas, continuing into November. The designs (by Stefanos Lazaridis) and dramaturgy have mostly aged well, aided by Warner’s high-drama but low-concept approach. The casting for this Rheingold is less starry than before, but makes for a good ensemble – which is exactly what Das Rheingold requires.For the opening scene, the depths of the Rhine are Read more ...
David Nice
Cinderella as opera in French: of late, the palm has always gone to Massenet's adorable (as in a-dor-Ah-bler) confection, and it should again soon when Glyndebourne offers a worthy home to the master's magic touch. The Cendrillon of Maltese-born honorary Parisian Nicolas Isouard, aka Nicolò, clearly had its day after the 1810 premiere, but it was eclipsed by Rossini's La Cenerentola coming along seven years later, and with good reason. The muse assigned to Rossini did not visit mostly pedestrian Isouard, though his approach is compact and briefly steps out of the generic with two pretty Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
It is a pleasure to report on the continuing success of the Saffron Opera Wagner project. The organisation was formed in 2013, and since then has presented concert performances of the Ring cycle and Meistersinger, and now Parsifal, all with an amateur orchestra and chorus and a cast of mostly lesser-known professionals. As this Parsifal demonstrated, the casting choices have generally been superb, and the amateur forces all well prepared, the results dramatically convincing, even in concert performance.The orchestra here was committed and well into the style of the music. But there were no Read more ...