Opera Reviews
Prom 24, The Fairy Queen, Les Arts Florissants/Le Jardin des Voix, Agnew review - hip-hop hornpipesWednesday, 07 August 2024
“One charming night gives more delight than a hundred lucky days”. So claims one of the gorgeous (and, in this case, risqué) numbers that stud Purcell’s “semi-opera” The Fairy Queen like sequins on a flamboyant party gown. Read more...
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Tristan und Isolde, Glyndebourne review - infinite love at white heatSaturday, 03 August 2024
Richard Strauss described conducting Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde for the first time as "the most wonderful day of my life". It’s understandable that Glyndebourne’s music director Robin Ticciati should wish to improve upon “wonderful” in conducting a concert staging in 2021 with "miraculous" in charge of the full Nikolaus Lehnhoff production. I challenge anyone to cite another Tristan more alert to every possibility – the electrifying, the ferocious, the transcendental. Read more... |
The Butterfly House, Clonter Opera review - Puccini in biographical briefsWednesday, 24 July 2024
For 50 years Clonter Opera, the song-on-the-farm project in rural Cheshire, has been encouraging would-be opera stars by giving them a chance to perform in undemanding conditions under the guidance of experienced professional. Read more... |
ll Segreto di Susanna/Pagliacci, Opera Holland Park review - on with the motley, out with the fagsThursday, 18 July 2024
Could “Cav and Pag” give way to “Sue and Pag”? As a double-bill partner for Leoncavallo’s backstage shocker Pagliacci, Opera Holland Park have scheduled not the standard Cavalleria Rusticana but an entirely different one-act work. Premiered in Munich in 1909, Wolf-Ferrari’s Il Segreto di Susanna plays droll, even farcical, variations on the same theme of male jealousy as newlywed Count Gil suspects his bride Countess Susanna of having an affair. Read more... |
theartsdesk at the Buxton International Festival - power and glory in early VerdiFriday, 12 July 2024
Buxton International Festival offers one thundering success, one uneasy compromise and one surprisingly enjoyable experience, in its three mainstage operas this year. Read more... |
Orlando, Academy of Ancient Music, Cummings, Barbican review - madly beautifulTuesday, 02 July 2024
The Academy of Ancient Music, which celebrates its “golden anniversary” this season, got going just as Handel’s operas began to leave the library at last and reclaim the stage. There they continue to flourish, dazzle and move – which makes any concert performance of them a slightly bittersweet pleasure. Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Garsington Opera review - fine-tuned telling it as it isSaturday, 29 June 2024
“Tradition is sloppiness,” Mahler the opera conductor is credited with saying. But in the case of old master John Cox’s long-serving Garsington production of the greatest of operatic comedes, not if it’s refreshed with the subtlest insights in to human tensions and frailties. Read more... |
Giulio Cesare, Glyndebourne review - every number a winner from dazzling revival castMonday, 24 June 2024
How much better can a classic get? Sebastian Scotney more or less asked the same question on theartsdesk the last time Giulio Cesare returned in triumph to Glyndebourne. I never saw David McVicar’s justly famous production of what has to be Handel’s most consistently inspired opera live before, but I wonder if every single number can ever have been applauded, as it was last night. Read more... |
theartsdesk at Smetanova Litomyšl - three fascinating operas and a masterpiece superbly vindicatedSaturday, 22 June 2024
What did they put in the water of Czechia’s central Bohemia/Moravia borderlands? From south to north there's Mahler’s birthplace in Kalište and the city of his youth, Jihlava; the Polička tower where Martinů was born; and finally the Litomyšl brewery which was Smetana’s first home (further east, Janáček and Freud were born six kilometres apart). Read more... |
Il Trittico, Welsh National Opera review - another triumph for a hard-pressed companyMonday, 17 June 2024
It’s somehow typical of the Welsh National Opera I’ve known now for the best part of sixty years that it should confront its current funding difficulties with brilliant productions of two of the more challenging works in the repertory. Read more... |
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