Opera Reviews
L'Olimpiade, Garsington OperaMonday, 04 June 2012
Despite ever-more determined attempts by musicologists to broaden the baroque repertoire of our opera houses, Handel still very much has things his own way. But in this Olympic year a sly challenge has emerged from Antonio Vivaldi’s L’Olimpiade – its topical, Games-themed premise garnering it more performances in a single year than in the past 200 put together. Undeniably apt, unquestionably novel, but is the opera actually any good? Read more...
|
La Bohème, Welsh National OperaSaturday, 02 June 2012
Of all Romantic operas, La Bohème is perhaps the one that responds best to what one might, for want of a better phrase, call straight theatrical treatment. It’s pure genre: no hidden meanings, no contemporary significance. “Scenes from the life”, as Murger called his book, now barely readable. Puccini’s opera, likewise, is short on continuity, long on atmosphere, very long on sentiment. Why would anyone bother with it? Read more... |
Salome, Royal Opera HouseFriday, 01 June 2012
According to Oscar Wilde’s Salome (and faithfully preserved in Hedwig Lachmann’s libretto), the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death. That may be so, but neither comes close to equalling the baffling mystery that is still David McVicar’s production. Read more... |
Caligula, English National OperaSaturday, 26 May 2012
Mass murder. Incest. Rape. Madness. This is quite a lot to be getting on with for a three-hour opera. Too much perhaps. Indeed, German composer Detlev Glanert seems so busy trying to pack in all the Grand Guignol elements that one expects from a portrait of Caligula that he never quite gets around to saying anything interesting about any of it. |
Classical CDs Weekly: Massenet, David Russell, WeinbergSaturday, 26 May 2012
|
La Cenerentola, Glyndebourne Festival OperaThursday, 24 May 2012
Rossini's La Cenerentola is not an opera that I'd normally recommend to anyone with even half a brain. It takes the simple if mildly nauseating little tale of Cinderella, pads it out with parental abuse and drawn out cliffhangers, and ends in a pass-the-sick-bag denouement of "Goodness Triumphant". Yet, in an act worthy of the fairy godmother herself, Glyndebourne has transformed the piece into something unmissable. Read more... |
The Cunning Little Vixen, Glyndebourne Festival OperaMonday, 21 May 2012
Glyndebourne nature, it seems, runs along as smoothly as the much discussed new wind turbine on the hill. Within the theatre, though, all is flux: director Melly Still and Vladimir Jurowski, conducting an incandescent London Philharmonic Orchestra, show just how flexible it's possible to be with the viciousness and the vivacity in Janáček's kaleidoscope of birth, copulation, death and a redemption of sorts in celebration of the natural order. Read more... |
Tristan und Isolde, Welsh National OperaSunday, 20 May 2012
Welsh National Opera has a good track record with Wagner. Its Meistersinger of two summers ago is already the stuff of legend (and alas not likely to return to reality); farther back one recalls a more than respectable Parsifal, a notable Ring cycle, and an old Tristan under Goodall that’s still talked about in hushed whispers. Read more... |
Falstaff, Royal OperaWednesday, 16 May 2012
I didn't know whether to sigh or to yawn. Another opera. Another 50s set. At least it started well. In an obsessively wood-panelled hunting lodge, fat Falstaff (Ambrogio Maestri) lies in his bed in filthy long johns amid a sea of empty silver platters, working out a way to pay his bills and satisfy his lust. Not a 50s cliché in sight - yet. |
Madam Butterfly, English National OperaWednesday, 09 May 2012
Origami birds flock in graceful chorus, a dancer flutters two fans into a pulsing captive butterfly, curtains of cherry blossom descend over glowing paper lanterns, and of course a small bunraku puppet steals the show. Seven years on Anthony Minghella’s Madam Butterfly is as beautiful as ever, and – if possible – even more Japanese. Read more... |
Massenet: Werther Rolando Villazón, Sophie Koch, Orchestra of the Royal Opera House/Antonio Pappano (DG)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...
Liepe, National Youth Orchestra of Ireland, NCH, Dublin revi...
There’s nothing like an anodyne new(ish) work to give a masterpiece an even higher profile. Rachel Portman‘s Tipping Points, promising to...
Albums of the Year 2024: Chihei Hatakeyama & Shun Ishiwa...
A gem for me this year has been the collaborative project between the veteran minimalist composer Chihei Hatakeyama and jazz...
Music Reissues Weekly: American Baroque - Chamber Pop and Be...
The descending refrain opening the song isn’t unusual but attention is instantly attracted as it’s played on a harpsichord. Equally instantly, an...
Nickel Boys review - a soulful experiment
RaMell Ross’s feature debut follows his poetic documentary Hale County This Morning, This Evening (2018) in again observing black...
Lockerbie: A Search for Truth, Sky Atlantic review - Colin F...
The destruction of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie on 21 December 1988 was one of the ghastliest events in what would become known as the War on...
Albums of the Year 2024: The Last Dinner Party - Prelude to...
Does absolutely everything have to get more difficult with each passing year? Apparently so. The amount of time I’ve spent deciding which of the...
Davis, National Symphony Orchestra, Maloney, National Concer...
In one sense it was a New Year’s Day “nearly”, just stopping short of giving us the already great Irish lyric-dramatic soprano Jennifer Davis in...
Albums of the Year 2024: Mk.gee - Two Star and the Dream Pol...
Mk.gee has been an unexpected thread in a year of music that’s pulled me in many different directions, punctuating the need for unique, sonically...
SAS Rogue Heroes, Series 2, BBC One review - Paddy Mayne...
Having carved a swathe of terror and destruction through the Axis forces in North Africa, the SAS return for a second series (again written by...