Opera Reviews
The Turn of the Screw, English National Opera review - Jamesian ambiguities chillingly preservedSaturday, 12 October 2024
At first, you wonder if the peculiar voice of Henry James’s maybe unreliable narrator can be preserved in this production. Surely the outcome is known if we first meet the Governess in an insane asylum bed? Yet whether she was mad or maddened during the course of terrifying events 30 years earlier remains crucially unclear. Between them director/designer Isabella Bywater, soprano Ailish Tynan and conductor Duncan Ward deliver all the frissons in Britten’s concentrated masterpiece. Read more... |
Trouble in Tahiti/A Quiet Place, Linbury Theatre review - top cast plays unhappy familiesSaturday, 12 October 2024
Most of us have been there: an impasse in a marriage, a bereavement in a dysfunctional family. Leonard Bernstein certainly had when he composed Trouble in Tahiti in 1952, basing the unhappy couple on his own parents and even the incipient problems in his own relationship with Felicia Montealegre (see the superb film Maestro), and 30 years later the sequel, A Quiet Place, when Felicia’s early death from cancer had left him unhappy and guilty. Read more... |
Blond Eckbert, English Touring Opera review - dark deeds afoot in the woodsMonday, 07 October 2024
Judith Weir’s Blond Eckbert, presented by English Touring Opera at the Hackney Empire, at the beginning of its tour (paired with The Snowmaiden, reviewed on theartsdesk last week) has all the biggest virtues of her work in spades: it is narratively lean, razor sharp in its scoring, and alluring in it its dressing up of the strange in the comforting garb of the familiar. Read more... |
The Marrriage of Figaro, Opera Project, Tobacco Factory, Bristol review - small is beautiful indeedMonday, 07 October 2024
The Marriage of Figaro is undoubtedly one of the greatest operas ever written. Mozart’s masterpiece is a display of musical perfection that never ceases to touch the heart and stimulate the musical mind. Read more... |
Béatrice et Bénédict, Irish National Opera, National Concert Hall, Dublin review - sung and spoken triumphWednesday, 02 October 2024
As Fiona Shaw’s shiningly free and easy narration told us, Shakespeare’s sparring Beatrice and Benedick are merely counterpoint to a supposedly comic plot that becomes a potential tragedy, and tests the japers’ seriousness. Berlioz wanted none of that in his last opera, all southern sunlight and moonshine, caprice and reverie. Last night we got the best of all possible worlds in a concert performance that showed an ideal way forward for this beauty of a numbers opera. Read more... |
Il trittico, Welsh National Opera review - welcome back (but not a good sign)Tuesday, 01 October 2024
This revival of Puccini’s Trittico a mere three and a half months after it was first shown on the Millennium Centre stage seems to bear witness to WNO’s current financial uncertainty. In effect, it reduces their 2024 repertory to half what it was a decade ago – four shows instead of eight, though admittedly all four productions have been new, at least to this company. Read more... |
The Snowmaiden, English Touring Opera review - a rich harvest with modest meansMonday, 30 September 2024
Just as the first autumn chills began to grip, English Touring Opera rolled into Hackney Empire with a reminder that the sun – “god of love and life” – will eventually return. But at what price of suffering and sacrifice? Read more... |
Suor Angelica, English National Opera review - isolated one-acter lacks emotional inscapingSaturday, 28 September 2024
Puccini elevated the operatic tearjerker to tragic status in three masterpieces: La bohème, Madama Butterfly and Suor Angelica, rivalling the other two in intensity despite its brevity. Its special atmosphere works best as the central part of a trilogy (Il Trittico) between a dark melodrama and a pacy comedy. The jury’s still out on whether it works on its own, so disappointingly undernourished is Annilese Miskimmon’s production. Read more... |
The Magic Flute, Opera North review - a fresh vision of Mozart’s masterpieceSaturday, 28 September 2024
In an autumn season of three revivals, Opera North begin by inviting James Brining, artistic director of Leeds Playhouse, to oversee his own production from five years ago of Mozart and Emanual Schikaneder’s extraordinary musical play. It’s the mainstay of the season, returning in 2025 (with some cast changes) as well as dominating the next two months. Read more... |
Eugene Onegin, Royal Opera review - the heart left coldWednesday, 25 September 2024
Emotional truth is elusive in Tchaikovsky’s “lyrical scenes” after Pushkin’s verse-novel. Overstress every feeling, as conductor Henrik Nánási did last night, and you leave some of us in the audience feeling manipulated. Play it cool, which is what we mostly get in Ted Huffman’s new production, and the heart is similarly untouched. Read more... |
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