wed 25/12/2024

Opera Reviews

La rondine, LSO, Pappano, Barbican review - sumptuous orchestral playing in an underrated score

alexandra Coghlan

There are no battlement leaps or murderous vows, no pistols or daggers, not so much as a slight cough disturbs the serene plot of La rondine – the Puccini opera once labelled a “poor man’s Traviata”.

Read more...

L’étoile, RNCM, Manchester review - lavish and cheerful absurdity

Robert Beale

Emmanuel Chabrier’s L’étoile is not exactly a French farce, but it comes from a post-Offenbach era (1877 saw its premiere) when cheerful absurdity was certainly expected, especially at Offenbach’s old theatre, the Bouffes Parisiens.

Read more...

The Pirates of Penzance, English National Opera review - fresh energy in clear-sighted G&S

David Nice

“Comedy is a serious thing,” quoth David Garrick. Gilbert and Sullivan knew it, and so does Mike Leigh, having bequeathed to ENO a clear and unfussy Pirates of Penzance. It does renewed honour to Victorian genius in Sarah Tipple’s freshly-cast revival. Most striking of all, perhaps, is how seriously conductor Natalie Murray Beale takes each musically rich number, vindicating Sullivan’s reputation as more than just a tunesmith to match Gilbert’s endlessly sharp and funny words.

Read more...

Rigoletto, Irish National Opera / Murrihy, Collins, NCH Dublin review - greatness everywhere

David Nice

How many Rigolettos have regular operagoers among you sat through where there wasn’t some major defect, in either the production or the three major roles? Here, there is none. INO’s jester and Duke are well cast, its Gilda supernaturally perfect in music and acting, while Julien Chavaz’s production, despite a few passing irritations, adds up to a coherent and disciplined whole. INO Artistic Director Fergus Sheil keeps Verdi's vivid music theatre on the move.

Read more...

The Elixir of Love, English National Opera review - a tale of two halves

David Nice

Sparkling Italian comic opera might have been just the tonic at this time. Trouble is, the bar was set so high recently by Wexford Festival Opera’s Le convenienze e inconvenienze teatrali, aka Viva la Mamma, that this better known, less malleable if more romantic Donizetti comedy came across as flat, one-dimensional and not very funny (I laughed out loud once; maybe I need to get out less). Which is a shame, because the singers deserved better.

Read more...

The Sound Voice Project, Linbury Theatre review - an art installation that has strayed into an opera house

alexandra Coghlan

What does it mean to have a voice? And what does it mean to lose it? Those are the questions the award-winning Sound Voice Project has explored – through research, collaboration and live performance – since its beginnings in 2016. The latest incarnation of composer Hannah Conway’s project is as “immersive digital opera performance installation”.

Read more...

The Tales of Hoffmann, Royal Opera review - three-headed monster feels baggier than ever

David Nice

Having all but sunk one seemingly unassailable opéra comique, Bizet’s Carmen, director Damiano Michieletto goes some way to helping out another with so many problems. Not far enough, alas, but the chosen edition, with its reams of recitative (mostly not by Offenbach), doesn’t help. Nor does the theme of women as either dolls, angels or devils. The real Hoffmann did it all so much better.

Read more...

Rigoletto, English National Opera review - another hit for Miller's Mob

Boyd Tonkin

How we used to mock those stuck-in-the-mud opera houses that wheeled out the same moth-eaten production of some box-office favourite decade after decade. Well, Jonathan Miller’s 1950s New York mafiosi version of Verdi’s Rigoletto first arrived on stage in 1982, after The Godfather (Parts I and II) but well before The Sopranos. For ENO at the Coliseum, Elaine Tyler-Hall has now directed its 14th revival.

Read more...

theartsdesk at Wexford Festival Opera - let's make three operas

David Nice

Name three operas framing dramas within, and you’d probably come up with Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos and Prokofiev’s The Love for Three Oranges. You might be harder pressed to come up with three more, but Wexford Festival Opera has done just that, theming this year’s triptych of rarities in the shape of never less than interesting, if often dramatically flawed, comedies by Donizetti, Mascagni and Stanford as “Theatre Within Theatre”.

Read more...

Albert Herring, Scottish Opera review - fun, frivolity, and fine music-making

Miranda Heggie

Having premiered at the Lammermuir Festival earlier this year, Daisy Evans’s new production of Britten’s Albert Herring is a gently funny and sweetly nostalgic telling of what’s essentially a coming of age comedy. In fact, the 80s costumes and the characters’ cute quirks wouldn't have felt out of place in a John Hughes movie – if Hughes set films in Suffolk. 

Read more...

Pages

latest in today

Help to give theartsdesk a future!

It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.

It followed some...

10 Questions for Mark Gatiss, writer-director of 'A Gho...

There are no white-sheeted ghosts in this year’s A Ghost Story for Christmas. The...

All Creatures Great and Small, Christmas Special, Channel 5...

Since its revival in 2020, All Creatures Great and Small has drawn big audiences internationally and become Channel 5’s biggest hit, even...

Travis, OVO Hydro review - a Christmas night out with some r...

Travis arrived onstage with the theme tune from classic sitcom Cheers as an accompaniment. The cavernous OVO Hydro might not be a place...

Nosferatu review - Lily-Rose Depp stands out in uneven horro...

Robert Eggers' strength as a director is his ability to bring historical periods alive with gritty, tactile realism. He does this...

First Person: cellist Matthew Barley on composing and record...

For many thousands of years, humans have turned to art to tell stories about themselves and others because it feels good. It feels good because we...

Death in Paradise Christmas Special, BBC One review - who ki...

Though Death in Paradise is an Anglo-French production filmed in Guadeloupe, in the French West Indies, the Frenchness seems to have...

The English Concert, Bicket, Wigmore Hall review - a Baroque...

Enough is as good as a feast, they say. But sometimes, especially at Christmas, you crave a properly groaning table. At the Wigmore Hall, The...

The Unthanks in Winter, Cadogan Hall review

A suitable place to find yourself out for the winter solstice, buttoning up for the longest night of the year, was at the Cadogan Hall off Sloane...

Albums of the Year 2024: Everything Everything - Mountainhea...

There are some years where my pick for album of the year is obvious; something stands out so...