Opera Reviews
Don Giovanni, Garsington OperaThursday, 07 June 2012
For all but two of its 30 years in business, Garsington Opera has had Mozart in each and every season. He's the nearest this company gets to a resident composer. While everything else at the seasonal operation is in flux, their Mozart is a constant. And as with any long-running relationship, there is a confidence in the coming together of the two of them that usually makes any new Mozart production at Garsington one of the Summer highlights. This year was no exception. Read more... |
L'Olimpiade, Garsington OperaMonday, 04 June 2012
Despite ever-more determined attempts by musicologists to broaden the baroque repertoire of our opera houses, Handel still very much has things his own way. But in this Olympic year a sly challenge has emerged from Antonio Vivaldi’s L’Olimpiade – its topical, Games-themed premise garnering it more performances in a single year than in the past 200 put together. Undeniably apt, unquestionably novel, but is the opera actually any good? Read more... |
La Bohème, Welsh National OperaSaturday, 02 June 2012
Of all Romantic operas, La Bohème is perhaps the one that responds best to what one might, for want of a better phrase, call straight theatrical treatment. It’s pure genre: no hidden meanings, no contemporary significance. “Scenes from the life”, as Murger called his book, now barely readable. Puccini’s opera, likewise, is short on continuity, long on atmosphere, very long on sentiment. Why would anyone bother with it? Read more... |
Salome, Royal Opera HouseFriday, 01 June 2012
According to Oscar Wilde’s Salome (and faithfully preserved in Hedwig Lachmann’s libretto), the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. That may be so, but neither comes close to equalling the baffling mystery that is still David McVicar’s production. Read more... |
Caligula, English National OperaSaturday, 26 May 2012
Mass murder. Incest. Rape. Madness. This is quite a lot to be getting on with for a three-hour opera. Too much perhaps. Indeed, German composer Detlev Glanert seems so busy trying to pack in all the Grand Guignol elements that one expects from a portrait of Caligula that he never quite gets around to saying anything interesting about any of it. |
Classical CDs Weekly: Massenet, David Russell, WeinbergSaturday, 26 May 2012
|
La Cenerentola, Glyndebourne Festival OperaThursday, 24 May 2012
Rossini's La Cenerentola is not an opera that I'd normally recommend to anyone with even half a brain. It takes the simple if mildly nauseating little tale of Cinderella, pads it out with parental abuse and drawn out cliffhangers, and ends in a pass-the-sick-bag denouement of "Goodness Triumphant". Yet, in an act worthy of the fairy godmother herself, Glyndebourne has transformed the piece into something unmissable. Read more... |
The Cunning Little Vixen, Glyndebourne Festival OperaMonday, 21 May 2012
Glyndebourne nature, it seems, runs along as smoothly as the much discussed new wind turbine on the hill. Within the theatre, though, all is flux: director Melly Still and Vladimir Jurowski, conducting an incandescent London Philharmonic Orchestra, show just how flexible it's possible to be with the viciousness and the vivacity in Janáček's kaleidoscope of birth, copulation, death and a redemption of sorts in celebration of the natural order. Read more... |
Tristan und Isolde, Welsh National OperaSunday, 20 May 2012
Welsh National Opera has a good track record with Wagner. Its Meistersinger of two summers ago is already the stuff of legend (and alas not likely to return to reality); farther back one recalls a more than respectable Parsifal, a notable Ring cycle, and an old Tristan under Goodall that’s still talked about in hushed whispers. Read more... |
Falstaff, Royal OperaWednesday, 16 May 2012
I didn't know whether to sigh or to yawn. Another opera. Another 50s set. At least it started well. In an obsessively wood-panelled hunting lodge, fat Falstaff (Ambrogio Maestri) lies in his bed in filthy long johns amid a sea of empty silver platters, working out a way to pay his bills and satisfy his lust. Not a 50s cliché in sight - yet. |
Massenet: Werther Rolando Villazón, Sophie Koch, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House/Antonio Pappano (DG)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...
theartsdesk Q&A: Gary Oldman on playing John Cheever in...
Gary Oldman has always lived life to the fullest, on screen and off. Maybe that's why he is often at his best in his pitch-perfect portraits of...
The Excursions of Mr Brouček, LSO, Rattle, Barbican review...
Who doesn’t love the quirky, passionate and humanitarian genius of Leoš Janáček? All of it, these days. Since Charles...
Conversations After Sex, Park Theatre review - pillow talk p...
In Dublin, a city that has changed more than most in the last 30 years, a young woman, with an English accent that is expensive to...
Album: PinkPantheress - Fancy That
There’s plenty of noise out there about 24-year-old Kentish musician Victoria Walker, AKA PinkPantheress. Since being acclaimed BBC Sound of 2022...
Malpractice, ITV1, Series 2 review - fear and loathing in th...
Following on from the first series of Malpractice in 2023, this second season again probes into issues of medical malfeasance and...
Shack, Union Chapel review - the surprise return of the Live...
After kicking off with the psychedelia-tinged “Sgt. Major,” they keep coming. A string of songs as Sixties-influenced as they are edgy and...
First Person: young cellist Zlatomir Fung on operatic fantas...
My new album, Fantasies, recorded with pianist Richard Fu, is the culmination of my years-long fascination with the wonderful genre of...
Blu-ray: Laurel & Hardy - The Silent Years (1928)
Eureka’s second volume of Laurel and Hardy shorts catches the pair in 1928 on the cusp of their successful...
Romeo and Juliet, Shakespeare's Globe - swagger and viv...
Holsters, Stetsons and bluegrass music bring a distinctive flavour to this...