Opera Reviews
Le Nozze di Figaro, Longborough Festival OperaMonday, 27 June 2016
“It doesn’t need me,” Sebastian Thomas writes in this season’s Longborough programme, “to labour the idea that the content of a theatrical or musical piece should find some relevance to our own lives.” No, indeed. Practically every director one could name labours it already, sometimes with very odd results. Read more... |
Werther, Royal OperaSaturday, 25 June 2016
All 23 of Massenet's mature operas boast memorably melodious quarters of an hour and fastidious orchestration, so why Werther’s special status as a repertoire staple? Three or four great arias may have been enough to clinch it. There’s also the fact that the source, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, confers a highbrow status the opera, a pale shadow of the original, doesn't really deserve. Read more... |
Jenůfa, English National OperaFriday, 24 June 2016
ENO's new artistic director Daniel Kramer must regret having gone on BBC Radio 4's Start the Week to talk about suspending Janáček "and other obscures" from the company's repertoire for several seasons to come. Good God, if Jenůfa, Janáček's first searing masterpiece, can't move an ENO novice to tears then something's wrong. Read more... |
Idomeneo, Garsington OperaThursday, 23 June 2016
Natural disaster, in the shape of a metaphorical sea-monster ravaging classical Crete, might make a director's imagination work overtime on Mozart's first, jagged masterpiece. Alas, only unnatural disasters have been inflicted upon us in productions at Glyndebourne, ENO and the Royal Opera, with singers going some way to make amends. Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Classical Opera, Page, Cadogan HallSaturday, 18 June 2016
Mozart operas on period instruments – it’s hardly a new idea, but it’s still the exception rather than the rule. The 18th–century sound has a lot to offer in Don Giovanni, as Ian Page and his Classical Opera Company demonstrated this evening. Clear string tone and vibrant woodwind colours were the order of the day. There was plenty of drama too, with Page expertly pacing the narrative and drawing an impressive and often robust tone from his modest forces. Read more... |
Be With Me Now, Britten Studio, SnapeThursday, 16 June 2016
As the hand-held credits popped up on screen to pianist and musical director Manoj Kamps's superb quartet arrangement of Mozart's Magic Flute Overture, the European Union's Culture Programme logo brought a spontaneous burst of applause. Not the norm for Suffolk this week, I'm told, but this audience knew how international opera is, how we're all connected in Europe's musical world. Read more... |
The Beggar's Opera, University of BirminghamWednesday, 15 June 2016
Memo to self: never read the director’s programme essay. Read more... |
The Iris Murder, Hebrides Ensemble, EdinburghTuesday, 14 June 2016
It just goes to demonstrate the breadth and ambition of the Hebrides Ensemble’s work. Read more... |
The Cunning Little Vixen, GlyndebourneMonday, 13 June 2016
Is The Cunning Little Vixen a jolly children’s pantomime, or is it a searching study of issues of life and death, Man and Nature? The answer, naturally, is that it’s both. Children dress up as animals, and sing and prance about. But at the same time grown-ups (both animal and human) dream and fantasize, couple and procreate, hunt and kill. Remarkably, it’s a tragedy that leaves no bitter taste. The heroine dies, but Nature goes on. Read more... |
La Bohème, Opera Holland ParkSunday, 12 June 2016
Boy meets girl; girl and boy fall in love; boy loses girl. In true bohemian fashion, La bohème can lay its operatic head anywhere from Paris to Peshawar, in any era from 90s punk to the Belle Epoque, and still make sense. What matters are the emotions; do we believe in the relationship between Rodolfo and Mimi, the camaraderie between Rodolfo and his friends? Read more... |
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