Opera Reviews
Der Rosenkavalier, GlyndebourneSunday, 18 May 2014
What spontaneous use might a silver rose take on after its formal presentation by a chubby cherub of a cavalier to a bartered bride-to-be? This and a thousand other score-co-ordinated details are things you never can predict in the hands of that chameleonic yet rigorous director Richard Jones. He throws out most of the meticulous stage directions in Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s rococo libretto for Richard Strauss and finds his own. You may not like them – I mostly did – but you can’t say that... Read more...
|
Gawain, BarbicanSaturday, 17 May 2014
Part of the Birtwistle at 80 series at the Barbican, this not-quite-semi-staged Gawain ended up being held back a little by its shoestring production, where a straight concert performance might have transcended its limitations. Read more... |
Così fan tutte, English National OperaSaturday, 17 May 2014
A cheeky series of signs raised at the start of Phelim McDermott’s new Così fan tutte for English National Opera promise “Big Arias”, “Intrigue”, “Lust” and “Chocolate” (among other things). Big pledges, all. And almost all delivered by this witty, exuberant and quietly revisionist production of Mozart’s challenging comedy. Read more... |
Yende, Vaughan, Cadogan HallFriday, 16 May 2014
Lovely singer, consummate pianist, shame about the programme. “Art song” is a rather prissy term, but we could have done with a few to ballast a diet of old pop – French chansons, Italian canzonettas, Spanish canciones, Victor Herbert tralala. Even a few substantial operatic arias with piano accompaniment made have made a difference. Read more... |
Down by the Greenwood Side, Harvey's Depot, LewesTuesday, 13 May 2014
The question about Harrison Birtwistle’s Down by the Greenwood Side is: what is it? Designated by the composer as a “dramatic pastoral”, which is not very enlightening, it is not really an opera, nor a play with music, nor a piece of performance art, but somehow a winning combination of all three. Read more... |
Schwanewilms, Connolly, Crowe, LSO, Elder, BarbicanFriday, 09 May 2014
Mozart usually makes a fine concert bedfellow for his most devoted admirer among later composers, Richard Strauss. Read more... |
Thebans, English National OperaSunday, 04 May 2014
It’s been a bloody week on the London stage. First Titus Andronicus maims and mutilates at the Globe, and now at English National Opera Frank McGuinness and Julian Anderson bring us a distillation of Sophocles’ three Theban plays, complete with eye-gouging and assorted hangings. But while Lucy Bailey found eloquent meaning in Shakespeare’s brutality, could Anderson do the same in this, his first opera? Read more... |
La Calisto, Hampstead Garden OperaMonday, 28 April 2014
Baroque operas are like buses. You wait years for some Cavalli to come along, and then three of his operas arrive almost at once. It all started with English Touring Opera’s Jason last October – a witty and endlessly shape-shifting work – followed by the Royal Opera’s glossy L’Ormindo at the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse last month. Now, undeterred by larger rivals, Hampstead Garden Opera continue the trend with La Calisto. Read more... |
Khovanshchina, Birmingham Opera CompanyWednesday, 23 April 2014
Has anyone ever sat through Musorgsky’s last, not quite finished, opera about the struggle for power in Moscow at the time of Peter the Great’s accession in the 1690s, and come away with the slightest idea of what it’s all about? If Khovanshchina had depended for its impact on any kind of Verdian clarity or dramaturgical shape, it would long ago have sunk without trace. Read more... |
La Traviata, Royal OperaSunday, 20 April 2014
The German soprano Diana Damrau has had the role of Violetta Valéry in La Traviata in her sights for a very long time. As she has explained in interviews, seeing the Zeffirelli film of the opera, with Teresa Stratas in the title role, as a 12-year old was a decisive moment in making her want to become a singer. That was 30 years ago. Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
Help to give theartsdesk a future!
It all started on 09/09/09. That memorable date, September 9 2009, marked the debut of theartsdesk.com.
It followed some...
Interview: Polar photographer Sebastian Copeland on a lifeti...
Sebastian Copeland’s images of the Arctic may look otherworldly – with their tilting cathedrals of ice, hypnotic light, and fractured seascapes...
Rats on Rafts, The Victoria review - crepuscular Dutch quint...
An album is one thing, a live show is another. A truism of course, but one which is inescapable during this London date by the Rotterdam-based...
Jessica Duchen: Myra Hess - National Treasure review - well-...
Myra Hess was one of the most important figures in British cultural life in the mid-20th century: the pre-eminent...
Blu-ray: Drugstore Cowboy
Rehab people will tell you there are three stages to drug abuse: fun; fun with problems; problems. There’s also a fourth phase, where there aren't...
A Thousand Blows, Disney+ review - Peaky Blinders comes to R...
Steven Knight is beginning to resemble the British version of Taylor Sheridan. While Sheridan has been saturating our...
Fledermaus, Irish National Opera review - sex, please, we...
Let’s finally face the elephant in the room: the most popular Viennese operetta, packed with hit numbers, no longer works on the stage as a whole...
Chamayou, BBC Philharmonic, Morlot, Bridgewater Hall, Manche...
The second of the Philharmonic’s Boulez-Ravel celebrations (birth centenary of the former, 150th of the latter) brought Bertrand...
The Capulets and the Montagues, English Touring Opera review...
A year ago, after a deeply disappointing Manon Lescaut at Hackney Empire, I wrote here that English Touring Opera had often excelled in...
Harry Hill, Wilton's Music Hall review - madcap comic o...
Harry Hill reminds us at one point during his latest touring show that he’s 60, but there’s no let-up in the energy he brings to ...