Opera Reviews
Daphnis et Églé/La Naissance d'Osiris, Les Arts Florissants, Christie, BarbicanWednesday, 19 November 2014
Were it not for William Christie and Les Arts Florissants, the vocal and instrumental ensemble he started in Paris in the 1970s, the beauties of the musical French Baroque might have remained a dusty fact of pre-Revolutionary history. As it is, there is barely a singer, player or conductor now performing Lully, Couperin, Rameau, Charpentier et al who has not benefited from the life’s work of this diligent conductor-musicologist. Through him, their arts are indeed flourishing. Read more...
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Glare, Linbury Studio TheatreSaturday, 15 November 2014
Søren Nils Eichberg’s new opera Glare is advertised as a “taut” thriller. It’s actually a short thriller. Big difference. Read more... |
Cristina, Regina di Svezia, Chelsea Opera Group, Cadogan HallSunday, 09 November 2014
One queen is much like another in so-called “historical” Italian early to mid 19th-century opera. Elizabeth of England, Christina of Sweden, take your pick, they all fall for a tenor courtier who loves Another (the seconda donna, soprano or mezzo). With Donizetti, the musical drama is almost as disposable as the plot until a stonking number or two rolls up. Read more... |
The Cunning Peasant, Guildhall SchoolThursday, 06 November 2014
Dvořák’s rustic operetta sits, swinging its legs rather diffidently, historically somewhere between the neverland Bohemia of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride and the lacerating reality of village life in Janáček'’s Jenůfa. The Cunning Peasant’s charms lie in its string of sophisticated songs and dances, more through-composed than Smetana’s, and in the abundance of not over-taxing roles, as well as chorus numbers, it offers to students. Read more... |
Levsha, Mariinsky Opera, Barbican HallWednesday, 05 November 2014
Of course unavoidable circumstances do strike, and concerts do get delayed, but it’s astonishing just how often those circumstances seem to conspire against Valery Gergiev. Last night’s UK premiere of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera Levsha – the second night of a Mariinsky triptych of performances at the Barbican – started a nice round hour late, which was a real shame because once the drama shifted from offstage to onstage the work revealed itself as a bit of a gem. Read more... |
Idomeneo, Royal OperaTuesday, 04 November 2014
God-sent sea monsters and divinely ordained human sacrifices don’t wash well with opera updated. The favoured contemporary take on the post-Trojan War myth of Mozart’s Idomeneo, which may even have originated in the last Covent Garden production 25 years ago by a fitfully brilliant Johannes Schaaf, has been to put a populace at risk from natural disaster and pestilence. Clearly the programme was expecting something of the sort, with its images of Hurricane Katrina. Read more... |
Betrothal in a Monastery, Maryinsky Opera, CardiffMonday, 03 November 2014
It’s one of the ironies of life and art that Prokofiev’s tenderest and most romantic opera was composed at a time when he was abandoning his wife in favour of a Moscow literature student half his age. Betrothal in a Monastery is a setting in Russian of an opera libretto by Sheridan about the attempt of a Spanish grandee to marry off his young daughter to an elderly fish merchant. Read more... |
La Bohème, English National OperaThursday, 30 October 2014
ENO may not always have matched the Royal Opera in the Great Puccini Voices stakes. But it's served up many of the classiest Mimìs, with Valerie Masterson, Mary Plazas and Elizabeth Llewellyn as top seamstresses. Californian former beauty queen Angel Blue, an acclaimed Musetta in the previous revival, now joins them. Read more... |
Wozzeck, BBCSSO, Runnicles, City Halls, GlasgowFriday, 24 October 2014
It takes a brave man to programme a single performance of Berg’s Wozzeck on a damp Thursday evening in Glasgow. But Donald Runnicles is such a man. In his five years at the helm of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra he has proved adept at making the implausible possible, and turning the ordinary into something extraordinary. Read more... |
Life on the Moon, English Touring OperaSaturday, 18 October 2014
You may be more familiar with the Italian title, Il mondo della luna, but chances are you won’t have seen this or any of Haydn’s other 16 operas. You haven’t missed much, at least until the last of his works as court composer to the Esterházy family, Armida, an "heroic drama" rather than the slim comedies which don’t seem to have inspired the composer to the heights of his symphonies and string quartets. Read more... |
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