Opera Reviews
The Sleeper, Welsh National Youth Opera, CardiffFriday, 15 July 2011
“These premises have 24-hour security surveillance,” reads one of the notices on the wall as we audience traipsed round the outside of Cardiff’s Coal Exchange between stages of this mobile production of Stephen Deazley’s new opera about people who can’t sleep. It turned out to be the only poster that had nothing to do with the performance, in among the “Nobody Sleeps” signs, the “Keep Awake”s, the “No Beds” (or whatever: “Nessun dorma” I didn’t see or hear, but might have done; it... Read more... |
Cendrillon, Royal OperaWednesday, 06 July 2011
After a heap of ashen revivals, it was time for the Royal Opera to take us to the ball in style. Which it does, for the most part. Of course, Massenet's "fairytale after Perrault" isn't Aida, Butterfly, Fidelio, Macbeth orTosca, all of which have deserved better from the house. Read more... |
La Rondine, Opera Holland ParkWednesday, 06 July 2011
With opera houses in Britain now ringing to the four-letter cries of Anna Nicole and Two Boys (not to mention the rather more elderly, but no less explicit utterances of ... Read more... |
Rinaldo, Glyndebourne Festival OperaSunday, 03 July 2011
Each Handel opera (or the good ones at any rate) has its own musical colour and character. Read more... |
Greek, Music Theatre Wales, BreconSunday, 03 July 2011
The funny thing about updating is how old-fashioned it can seem. Perhaps that’s why opera directors “update” to the Fifties, building in their own obsolescence. Steven Berkoff didn’t deliberately do this (I suppose) in his Oedipus play Greek; yet behind the interminable shits and fucks, the inyerface monkey farts, the snot and the vomit, there does lurk a rather touching aproned and flat-capped mum-and-dad Family Favourites world that was certainly long dead by 1980, when... Read more... |
We Are Shadows, Spitalfields MusicSunday, 26 June 2011
Spitalfields Summer Music Festival is now finished for another year, but bid farewell to its audiences in fitting style with We Are Shadows – a new community opera devised by composer John Barber and librettist Hazel Gould. Bringing together over 200 local participants, whether as singers and performers or working behind the scenes to usher this two-year project to fruition, it’s a show that celebrates not only the talents of the Spitalfields community, but also that most universal... Read more... |
Madama Butterfly, Royal OperaSunday, 26 June 2011
Directors of Madama Butterfly are spoilt for choice when it comes to visual imagery. At their disposal are the vast aesthetic resources of at least one, or, if they're clever, two great cultural superpowers. Thus, Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier's Ikea-raid from 2003 (quite unbelievably returning to the Royal Opera House last night for a fourth time) isn't so much disappointing as criminally negligent. As the dozen or so identikit Japanese blinds (I'll give them £2.50 for the lot...
Read more...
|
Two Boys, English National OperaSaturday, 25 June 2011
Nico Muhly had one humble aim for his first opera. He wanted to create an episode of Prime Suspect, he told me last week. "A grand opera that functions as a good night's entertainment." There's no doubt he's achieved that. Two Boys, receiving its world premiere last night at the English National Opera, is as gripping an operatic thriller as any ever penned.
Read more...
|
Peter Grimes, Royal OperaWednesday, 22 June 2011
It’s the oldest coup de théâtre in the postmodernist playbook – the curtain rises to reveal an audience staring back at us – but still, in the opening seconds of Willy Decker’s Peter Grimes, one of the most effective. Our theatrical doubles here are sinister creatures indeed, massed rows of sombre Victorians whose brutal Christianity is no less severe than the angles of John Macfarlane’s set. Read more... |
La Verità in Cimento, Garsington OperaTuesday, 21 June 2011
With so many of the premieres and rediscoveries of the summer opera season coming from the bel canto repertoire, it’s lovely to see Garsington Opera striking out in a different direction. Following on from last year’s L'Incoronazione di Dario (and culminating aptly next year in L’Olimpiade), the company this year offer up that exotic rarity La verità in cimento – a middle-period Vivaldi opera, behind the veil of whose unfamiliar title are hiding a harem of... 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...
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...
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...
Album: Arcade Fire - Pink Elephant
20 years on from their first appearance on record, the seventh long-player from...
Fake, ITV1 review - be careful what you wish for
The art of the conman is persuading their victim to fool themselves, which is the premise that lies at the core of this Australian drama series....
theartsdesk Q&A: film director Déa Kulumbegashvili on he...
One of the most exciting new voices in Eastern European film, Déa Kulumbegashvili is not concerned with conventional shot lengths. She has been...
Music Reissues Weekly: John McKay - Sixes and Sevens
Sixes and Sevens is a surprise. A big one. Since leaving Siouxsie and the Banshees in September 1979, John McKay has...