Opera Reviews
Pygmalion, Early Opera Company, Curnyn, Middle Temple Hall review - Rameau magic outside the opera houseWednesday, 21 May 2025
With French baroque opera all but banished from the UK’s major opera companies, it’s left to concert halls and country houses to fill the void. There’s a full-length treat ahead this summer with Rameau’s opéra-ballet Les Indes Galantes at Hampshire’s Grange Festival, but first Temple Music served up an amuse-bouche from Christian Curnyn and his Early Opera Company. Read more... |
Parsifal, Glyndebourne review - the music flies up, the drama remains belowMonday, 19 May 2025
There’s a grail, but it doesn't glow in a mundane if perverted Christian ritual. Three of the main characters have young and old actor versions and the “wonder-working spear” is a knife in a Cain and Abel story superimposed on Wagner’s myth (as if that wasn’t complicated enough). Kundry, whom the composer defines as literally flying between “good” and “bad” worlds, enters primly in the first two acts bearing a tea-tray. Read more... |
Giulio Cesare, The English Concert, Bicket, Barbican review - 10s across the board in perfect HandelMonday, 12 May 2025
Is Giulio Cesare in Egitto, to give the full title, Handel’s best and shapeliest opera? Glyndebourne’s revival of the legendary David McVicar production last year made it seem so, not least thanks to the presence of two of last night’s soloists, Louise Alder as Cleopatra and Beth Taylor as Cornelia. Highlight of 2022 was the English Concert’s more sparely presented Serse. This concert Cesare from that stable lived up to both standards. Read more... |
The Excursions of Mr Brouček, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review - sensuousness, fire and comedy in perfect balanceWednesday, 07 May 2025
Who doesn’t love the quirky, passionate and humanitarian genius of Leoš Janáček? All of it, these days. Since Charles Mackerras introduced the UK to a then-unknown, even the less familiar operas have had plenty of exposure. Simon Rattle was among the champions, giving an early concert performance (the UK premiere, I think) of the astonishing Osud (Fate). Now he's performing and recording them all with the London Symphony Orchestra. Read more... |
Pimpinone, Royal Opera in the Linbury Theatre review - farce with a sting in its tailSaturday, 03 May 2025
Full marks to the Royal Opera for good planning: one first night knocking us all sideways with the darkest German operatic tragedy followed by another letting us off the hook with a short comedy by Wagner’s compatriot Telemann. The premiere of Pimpinone predates that of Die Walküre by nearly a century and a half and we mark its 300th anniversary this year. But is it too slight for resurrection? Read more... |
Die Walküre, Royal Opera review - total music dramaFriday, 02 May 2025
Wagner’s universe, in the second of his Ring operas which brings semi-humans on board to challenge the gods, matches exaltation and misery, terror and tragedy – and throws down a gauntlet to singers, orchestra and director capable of going to extremes with due discipline. Read more... |
Simon Boccanegra, Opera North review - ‘dramatic staging’ proves its worthMonday, 28 April 2025
Opera North have recently pioneered a way of presenting some big works which they call “dramatic concert stagings”, performing in concert halls as well as theatres, with the orchestra on the platform behind the singers and a minimalist set, and the principals in present-day costumes symbolic of characters’ type. Read more... |
Peter Grimes, Welsh National Opera review - febrile energy and rageTuesday, 08 April 2025
Emotions run high at WNO these days. When the company’s co-directors, Sarah Crabtree and Adele Thomas, feel impelled to take to the stage at the end of the first night of Peter Grimes, in front of the entire company, chorus, orchestra and all, you know that matters have reached a pass that only a massive show of enthusiastic solidarity can hope to assuage. Read more... |
Owen Wingrave, RNCM, Manchester review - battle of a pacifistWednesday, 02 April 2025
It’s quite ironic that the Royal Northern College of Music should have invited, as director of this, Britten’s avowedly pacifist opera, Orpha Phelan – whose version of his Billy Budd for Opera North nearly 10 years ago contained one of the most thrilling battle scenes ever staged. Read more... |
La finta giardiniera, The Mozartists, Cadogan Hall review - blooms in the wild gardenWednesday, 26 March 2025
Just now, the notion of a long-term project that concludes in 2041 sounds like an optimistic bet on the far future worthy of some 18th-century Enlightenment philosophe – Voltaire’s Dr Pangloss, maybe. The musicians of The Mozartists are clearly hoping for the best in the best of all possible worlds, as their MOZART250 programme ambitiously tracks, in annual increments, the music that Wolfgang Amadeus wrote exactly 250 years ago. Read more... |
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