Opera Reviews
La Bohème, Royal Opera review - spectacle and sentiment not yet in focusTuesday, 12 September 2017
“I’m not in the mood” – “non sono in vena” – sings aspiring poet Rodolfo as he settles down to write a lead article. Was it me, or had the mood not settled by the premiere of the Royal Opera’s first new production of Puccini's structurally perfect favourite for 43 years? The singing was good to occasionally glorious, Antonio Pappano’s conducting predictably idiomatic and supportive. Read more...
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Princess Ida, National Gilbert & Sullivan Opera Company review - sparkling comedy, wobbly setsFriday, 01 September 2017
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you have to be pretty silly to take Gilbert and Sullivan seriously. But even sillier not to. Read more... |
Prom 61 review: Fleming, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, Oramo - heliotropic ecstasiesThursday, 31 August 2017
No sunshine without shadows was one possible theme rippling through this diva sandwich of a Prom. Read more... |
Edinburgh Festival 2017 review: Verdi's Macbeth - exhilarating and overwhelmingMonday, 21 August 2017
Skeletal horses; piles of newborn babies smothered in a bloody sheet; a whole garden centre of prickly pears. There’s no denying that Italian director Emma Dante’s new production of Verdi’s Macbeth, which Turin’s Teatro Regio brings to the Edinburgh International Festival, is visually dazzling, even at times hallucinatory. Read more... |
Prom 31 review: La Damnation de Faust, Gardiner - Berlioz tumbles out in rainbow coloursWednesday, 09 August 2017
The road to hell is paved with brilliant ideas in Berlioz's idiosyncratic take on the Faust legend. Read more... |
Prom 29 review: BBCSO, Bychkov - Musorgsky's Khovanshchina sears in concertMonday, 07 August 2017
"Ura!" as soldiers cry in Russian epic opera's last fling, Prokofiev's War and Peace: supertitles have arrived at the Proms, after much special pleading here and elsewhere. Read more... |
La clemenza di Tito, Glyndebourne review - fine musical manoeuvres in the darkThursday, 27 July 2017
So much light in the Glyndebourne production of Brett Dean's Hamlet; so much darkness in Mozart's La clemenza di Tito according to director Claus Guth. Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Clonter Opera review - a wedding full of future starsMonday, 24 July 2017
Clonter Opera is a finishing school for young opera performers, with its own well appointed theatre and professional administration and artistic direction, based on a farm in Cheshire near Jodrell Bank. It’s seen a succession of promising young post-conservatoire singers come to perform in fully staged productions for many years, and is also (from an audience point of view) the only countryside summer opera venue of any substance in the north of England. Read more... |
Prom 9 review: Fidelio, BBCPO, Mena - classy prison drama rarely blazesSaturday, 22 July 2017
What a pity Beethoven never composed an appendage to Fidelio called The Sorrows of Young Marzelline. One crucial moment apart, the music he gives to his second soprano in his only opera isn't his best, but Louise Alder so lived the role of the gaoler's daughter in love with a woman disguised as a man that everything else felt rather less intense. It's only fair to say that there were... Read more... |
Jette Parker Young Artists Summer Performance, Royal Opera review - vocal promise, poor stagecraftTuesday, 18 July 2017
They get to work with the best music and language coaches in the business. They make their mark in small parts throughout the Royal Opera season and showcase their art more prominently at the end of it, proving to the world that there are major talents among them (four outstanding ones, I reckon, on this showing). Read more... |
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