Opera Reviews

Der Rosenkavalier, English National Opera

David Benedict Monday, 30 January 2012

As in sex, so it is in music: there’s a lot riding on the climax. The celebrated third act trio of Der Rosenkavalier is arguably the most famous orgasm in music – dear reader, can you name a better one? – but time it wrongly and you’ll regret it. There is, however, absolutely nothing regrettable about this A-list cast in the hands of director David McVicar and conductor Edward Gardner. Theirs is the most assured, most riveting Rosenkavalier in this country for years.

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Don Giovanni, Royal Opera

alexandra Coghlan Sunday, 22 January 2012

Francesca Zambello’s production of Don Giovanni may only be 10 years old, but is already showing signs of decrepitude. Even back in its youth in 2002-3, this staging never had much of a spring in its step, but at least there were some fantastic casts to compensate.

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Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Opera North

graham Rickson Sunday, 15 January 2012

It’s the pace that takes getting used to in a Baroque opera. Five words in the libretto can easily take up five minutes to sing, and Handel’s music is often disconcertingly jaunty, even when tragic events are unfolding. Tim Albery has also directed Opera North’s current Madam Butterfly revival, a thrillingly cinematic, fast-moving production. His Giulio Cesare is judiciously pruned, with a total running time of about three hours.

2011: Schoolroom Fairies and a Cross-Dressing Mezzo

David Nice Friday, 30 December 2011

Two precisely imagined dream-visions bookend a cornucopia on the musical front. I’ll start with the deadly but save the apparently frivolous for the top slot. Christopher Alden’s pitiless exiling of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream from Elizabethan wood to 1960s school block was to opera what Lars von Trier’s Melancholia was to film: audience-sundering, often alienating, sometimes enticing, but very much its own consistent world.

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2011: Anthemic Elbow, Iranian drama, and Fear and Loathing in Elsinore

james Woodall Wednesday, 28 December 2011

The Barbican has always led the way in London in international theatre programming. The year there ended on a high, with Thomas Ostermeier’s Hamlet from the Schaubühne laying down new markers for transgressive commitment. I was sceptical about it when I saw the Berlin première in 2008, and our own critic was not, commendably enough, in a mood to be fooled around with.

2011: Unlovely Love Stories and Unerotic Erotic Tales

Josh Spero Wednesday, 28 December 2011

While I'm still learning to disentangle my mezzo from my Meistersinger, I enjoyed a lot of the opera on offer in London this year, especially at English National Opera. Parsifal was perfect and Rameau's Castor and Pollux, while probably a little too Germanic in direction with its dancing amputated legs and unerotic nudity, was wonderfully sung.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Royal Opera

David Nice Tuesday, 20 December 2011

A young chap from Elsewhere woos an alderman's daughter: not Dick Whittington in panto London, but Wagner's Walther von Stolzing in an unseasonal Nuremberg.

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UnDance, Mark-Anthony Turnage/Wayne McGregor/Mark Wallinger, Sadler’s Wells

Judith Flanders Friday, 02 December 2011

It is unusual in art for collaborators to be of equal star-wattage. The pairing of Benjamin Britten and WH Auden was one such. Another, much longer-lasting, was Stravinsky and Balanchine, a partnership of equals that endured for nearly half a century. More recently, Antony Gormley has worked with both Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, to great effect.

Tosca, English National Opera

David Nice Sunday, 27 November 2011

Who is more likely to be an operatic creature of flesh and blood: Puccini's young diva, unexpectedly caught up in the infernal machine of a lustful tyrant, or Tchaikovsky's teenager impetuously pouring out her soul in a love letter to a man she's just fallen for? Usually, you'd go for Tatyana over Tosca every time. At ENO it's currently the other way round.

The Merry Wives of Windsor, Guildhall School of Music and Drama

David Nice Tuesday, 15 November 2011

Theatregoers may be disappointed to read on and discover I mean Otto Nicolai's Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, the only 19th-century Shakespeare-based opera in the German language to hold the stage. Which it did, and not just in Germany, until the arrival of Verdi's infinitely superior Falstaff. Is this that rare thing, German comedy in music between Beethoven's Eighth Symphony and Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel that's actually funny?