Opera Reviews
Beatrice and Benedict, Welsh National OperaSaturday, 18 February 2012
Such a pity about Beatrice and Benedict! As a musical visualiser, a creator of musical tableaux, a radio composer avant la lettre, Berlioz had few equals. The Damnation of Faust is surely the greatest radio opera ever written. But for some reason he had no grasp of the stage. Benvenuto Cellini is a lifeless succession of spectacular tableaux. Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Royal OperaMonday, 13 February 2012
When blithe Susanna and not the expected Cherubino emerges from hiding before the astonished Countess and enraged Count, the latter instantly back-pedals on the fury he has been heaping upon his seemingly faithless wife. She rounds on him: “Crudele, più quella non sono!” (“Traitor, I am no longer her”) and everything suddenly stops. It's a tiny two-beat rest that usually goes for nothing except the signal for a key change, but here the moment is charged with drama. Read more... |
La Traviata, Welsh National OperaSunday, 12 February 2012
Famously, at its Venice premiere in 1853, La traviata had trouble with the censor, not only over the salty innuendos of the plot, but over the simple fact that it was set in the present day and in contemporary costume. A rule like that would finish off most updated modern stagings (and no bad thing at that). But David McVicar’s now two-year-old staging of Verdi’s early verismo masterpiece in Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre wouldn’t be one of them. Read more... |
The Tales of Hoffmann, English National OperaSaturday, 11 February 2012
For all its comic fantasy and lilting tunes, there’s nothing pastel-coloured about Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Deaths are frequent and bloody, humour is macabre, and emotions run high – being late to the pub is cause enough for violence and conspiracy theories. It’s a world of sliding screens, where a smile always threatens to become a leer, a kiss a murder. Read more... |
Der Rosenkavalier, English National OperaMonday, 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. Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Royal OperaSunday, 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. Read more... |
Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Opera NorthSunday, 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. Read more... |
2011: Schoolroom Fairies and a Cross-Dressing MezzoFriday, 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. Read more... |
2011: Anthemic Elbow, Iranian drama, and Fear and Loathing in ElsinoreWednesday, 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. Read more... |
2011: Unlovely Love Stories and Unerotic Erotic TalesWednesday, 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. Read more... |
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