Opera Reviews
Ariadne auf Naxos, Scottish Opera review - superb singing in slick new productionTuesday, 27 March 2018
"The Show must go on". So say the posters dotted around Glasgow and Edinburgh for Scottish Opera's production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. Except on Thursday, it didn’t. Read more... |
Hansel and Gretel, RNCM, Manchester review – an urban dreamMonday, 19 March 2018
Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel is a ‘"fairytale opera" (its composer’s description), and yet one characteristic frequently commented on is its "Wagnerian" scoring. For this production, with David Pountney’s English translation, the RNCM used Derek Clark’s reduced orchestration. Read more... |
La traviata, English National Opera review - into a vortex of ineptitudeSaturday, 17 March 2018
You don't have to be a good director to manage the artistic side of an opera house. Daniel Kramer arrived at ENO and boosted morale at a time when company relations with then-CEO Cressida Pollock had hit rock bottom, and his repertoire choices for the new limited seasons look fine so far. Read more... |
Wake, Birmingham Opera Company review - power to the peopleThursday, 15 March 2018
“Would you like a veil?” asked a steward, offering a length of black gauze, and when you’re at a production by Birmingham Opera Company it’s usually wisest to say yes. Read more... |
Rinaldo, The English Concert, Barbican review - Bicket's band steals the spotlightWednesday, 14 March 2018
It was the work with which Handel conquered London, the Italian opera that finally wooed a suspicious English audience to the charms of Dr Johnson’s “exotic and irrational entertainment”. Three hundred years later, neither Rinaldo nor London’s audience has changed much. Read more... |
From the House of the Dead, Royal Opera review - Janáček's prison oddity prompts hot tearsThursday, 08 March 2018
A political prisoner is brutally initiated into the life of a state penitentiary, and leaves it little over 90 minutes later. Four inmates reveal their brutal past histories with elliptical strangeness - each would need an episode of something like Orange is the New Black - and two plays staged during a holiday for the convicts take up about a quarter of the action. Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, ENO review - shiveringly beautiful BrittenFriday, 02 March 2018
“What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?” Hang on a minute, Tytania, there are no flowers. Instead, as Britten’s ominously low strings slither and tremble up and down the scale, the curtain rises on a huge, near-acidic emerald green hilly slope lying against a seemingly fathomless International Klein Blue cyclorama broken only by a glowing crescent moon. Except it’s not just a hill: it’s also a giant bed; the perfect bed, in fact, in which to spend one wonderful midsummer’s night. Read more... |
Dialogues des Carmélites, Guildhall School review - calm and humane drama of faithTuesday, 27 February 2018
One question dominates any staging of Dialogues des Carmélites. How will the production team deal with the cruelty and tragedy in the 12th and last scene when all of the nuns, one by one, go through with their vow of martyrdom and calmly proceed to the guillotine, singing the Salve Regina? Read more... |
La Vie Parisienne, Royal Birmingham Conservatoire review - vintage champagne in a new bottleFriday, 23 February 2018
Don’t you just love that new concert hall smell? Read more... |
Dead Man Walking, Barbican review - timely and devastating meditation on human violence and forgivenessWednesday, 21 February 2018
You have to wonder why it has taken this long. Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking premiered in San Francisco back in 2000 and has since been performed over 300 times across the world, staged everywhere from Cape Town to Copenhagen. 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...
A Thousand Blows, Disney+ review - Peaky Blinders comes to R...
Steven Knight is beginning to resemble the British version of Taylor Sheridan. While Sheridan has been saturating our...
Hinds, St Lukes and the Winged Ox, Glasgow review - Spanish...
Hinds don't believe in God. They declared this as they surveyed the converted church that is St Luke's, and given the past few years you can...
Music Reissues Weekly: Diggin' For Gold Volume 14 - Nor...
In 1964, the Norwegian division of Philips Records began issuing singles labelled “Bergen Beat.” The picture sleeves of 45s by Davy Dean and the...
The Monkey review - a grisly wind-up
Longlegs’ trapdoor ending snapped tight on its clammy Lynchian mood, reconfiguring its Silence of the Lambs serial-killer yarn...
Richard II, Bridge Theatre review - handsomely mounted, emot...
Screen stardom is generally anointed at the box office so it's a very real delight to find the fast-rising Jonathan Bailey taking time out from...
Backstroke, Donmar Warehouse review - a complex journey thro...
The theatre director Anna Mackmin has...
Donald Rodney: Visceral Canker, Whitechapel Gallery review -...
Donald Rodney’s most moving work is a photograph titled In the House of My Father, 1997 (main picture). Nestling in the...
Album: Heather Nova - Breath and Air
With her 13th studio album, Heather Nova delivers what you might expect from one of the 90s' most distinctive alternative voices – though longtime...