Opera Reviews

4.48 Psychosis, Royal Opera, Lyric Hammersmith

alexandra Coghlan Wednesday, 25 May 2016

New operas are a risky business, or so the Royal Opera’s past experience teaches us. For years, visiting the company’s Linbury Studio Theatre was like rolling the dice while on a losing streak: vain, desperate hope followed inevitably by disappointment. Glare, The Virtues of Things, Clemency, the failed experiment that was OperaShots. But recently things have taken a turn. Gradually, thanks to works from Birtwistle, Haas and more, the risk has begun to pay off.

Oedipe, Royal Opera

David Nice Tuesday, 24 May 2016

"Unjustly neglected masterpiece" is a cliché of musical criticism, and usually an exaggeration.

Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Glyndebourne

David Nice Monday, 23 May 2016

"We're off to Glyndebourne, to see a ra-ther bor-ing op-ra by Rosseeeni," quoth songwriting wags Kit and the Widow. So here it was at the Sussex house after a 34-year absence, the most famous of all his operas which includes the overture’s oboe tune to which those words were set, and it wasn't possible that The Barber of Seville, pure champagne, could ever be boring. Or was it?

Comment

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Glyndebourne

alexandra Coghlan Sunday, 22 May 2016

A celebration of the power of words and music (leaving aside, briefly, that more troubling business about the Fatherland), Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is a natural opener for the summer opera season.

Madam Butterfly, English National Opera

alexandra Coghlan Tuesday, 17 May 2016

There’s a beautiful moment at the start of Act II of Anthony Minghella’s Madam Butterfly. Butterfly kneels, leaning forward to kiss Pinkerton, seated in his defiantly Western armchair. A paper screen moves swiftly across our view, and almost before it has passed he is gone, just another evanescent vision in this gorgeous, ephemeral world where cherry blossom no sooner flowers than it fades and falls.

In Parenthesis, Welsh National Opera

stephen Walsh Saturday, 14 May 2016

War may be a dramatic affair for anyone involved in it, but staging it is another matter. In fact describing it satisfactorily at all needs either a Tolstoyan flair for the large canvas, or else a poetic genius for directing its force inwards, into self-reflection or religious contemplation or the kind of intense verbal music, rich in historical and literary allusion, that the great Welsh artist and writer David Jones made his own in his long, tragic prose-poem, In Parenthesis.

Pleasure, Royal Opera, Lyric Hammersmith

Bernard Hughes Friday, 13 May 2016

A 28-year-old British composer makes his name with a new four-hand opera, set in contemporary Britain but underpinned by classical legend, pushing the boundaries of operatic subject matter and launching a glittering career. This was Mark-Antony Turnage and his breakthrough work Greek in 1988, showing uncanny parallels with Mark Simpson and his new opera Pleasure.

Die Zauberflöte, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Fischer, RFH

David Nice Wednesday, 11 May 2016

Sunlit golden mean or slightly hazy middle-of-the-road? Conductor-director Iván Fischer's fully costumed and imagined concert of The Magic Flute - or perhaps it would better have been titled Die ZauberFlute given its intelligent mix of sung German and English dialogue taken by six excellent young British-based actors - was always going to be hard pressed to match the recent, hyper-communicative English National Opera/Complicite revival.

Il Vologeso, Classical Opera, Cadogan Hall

David Nice Friday, 29 April 2016

A mere 10 minutes in to this concert performance of an 18th century delight by Neapolitan Niccolò Jommelli, you knew the form to expect for the rest of the evening. Ian Page's Classical Orchestra kicked off with bracing rhythmic vitality from the start, and sounded super-bright in Cadogan acoustics so ideal for their forces. Then three of the main singers quickly showed their total classiness

Comment

Tannhäuser, Royal Opera

Gavin Dixon Wednesday, 27 April 2016

Tim Albery’s 2010 production of Wagner's Tannhäuser is back for a revival at Royal Opera, featuring a different conductor and a nearly new cast, with one notable exception. The production itself is serviceable, visually coherent and with plenty of atmosphere. The sets, by Michael Levine begin with a replica of the Covent Garden proscenium arch in the Venusberg scene, which is then shown in progressive states of decay in the following acts.