Opera Reviews
Flight, Scottish Opera review - poignant and powerful, this production soarsMonday, 19 February 2018
Inspired by the astonishing true story of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, the Iranian refugee who lived in Charles de Gaulle Airport for 18 years, Jonathan Dove’s Flight is a humorous, touching, uplifting yet profoundly poignant study into human relationships, interactions and emotions. This is opera buffa for the modern age – relevant, relatable, lighthearted and often downright silly, but still revealing some very pertinent truths. Read more... |
Iolanthe, English National Opera review - bright and beautiful G&S for allWednesday, 14 February 2018
Very well, so ENO's latest Gilbert and Sullivan spectacular was originally to have been The Gondoliers directed by Richard Jones and conducted by Mark Wigglesworth. Read more... |
Un ballo in maschera, Opera North review - decent, no moreMonday, 12 February 2018
You’d expect a degree of mischief and bafflement in an opera about mistaken identity, closing with a scene set at a masked ball. But Tim Albery’s new Opera North Un ballo in maschera is confusing for the wrong reasons, its shortcomings all the more irritating compared how good the performance actually sounds. Read more... |
Tosca, Welsh National Opera review - ticking the traditionalist boxesSaturday, 10 February 2018
Opera-lovers: if you’ve finally had enough of the wheelchairs and syringes, the fifties skirts and heels, the mobile phones and the white box sets, and the rest of the symbolic paraphernalia of the right-on modern opera production, pop along to the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff and catch up with Michael Blakemore’s... Read more... |
Carmen, Royal Opera review - clever concept, patchy singing, sexy dancingWednesday, 07 February 2018
Roll up, dépêchez-vous, for Carmen the - what? Circus? Vaudeville/music-hall/cabaret? Opéra-ballet, post-Rameau? Not, certainly, a show subject to the kind of updated realism which has been applied by just about every production other than the previous two at Covent Garden. Read more... |
La forza del destino, Welsh National Opera review - rambling drama, fine musicSaturday, 03 February 2018
David Pountney’s tenure at WNO has been an almost unqualified success, despite some eccentricities of repertoire and a certain obstinacy in the matter of new commissions. His own productions have included at least three of unforgettable quality. Read more... |
Orlando, La Nuova Musica, SJSS review - Handel painted in primary coloursFriday, 02 February 2018
The advertising for La Nuova Musica’s Orlando billed it as “Handel’s most psychologically complex opera”. Whether or not you agree (and there are plenty of heavyweight rivals – Alcina, Giulio Cesare and Agrippina just for starters) there’s also the issue that it’s only half the story. Read more... |
Das Rheingold, LPO, Jurowski, RFH review - orchestral revelations, but cursing Alberich trumps wooden WotanSunday, 28 January 2018
Vladmir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra have been to the bottom of the Rhine before, but in 2015 only did a whistlestop tour of the rest of Rheingold's terrain with an extensive array of excerpts. Read more... |
BBCSO, Pons, Barbican review - love hurts in vivid Spanish double billSaturday, 20 January 2018
This was an evening of Iberian highways re-travelled, but with a difference. At the beginning of 2016, the centenary of Spanish master Enrique Granados's untimely death, two young pianists at the National Gallery shared the two piano suites that make up the original Goyescas; finally last night at the Barbican we got the opera partly modelled on their deepest movements. Read more... |
The Return of Ulysses, Royal Opera, Roundhouse review - musical drama trumps dodgy stagecraftThursday, 11 January 2018
The power of music solves every problem, at least when as bewitchingly performed as it was here. Read more... |
Pages
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 10,000 pieces, we're asking for £3.95 per month or £30 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take an annual subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
latest in today
DVD/Blu-ray: Pet Shop Boys - Inner Sanctum
Pet Shop Boys are never shy of producing stylishly conceived fan mementos. Coming not long after Faber & Faber’s hardback collection of Neil...
Sleaford Mods, Dreamland, Margate review - musical news from...
Sleaford Mods are livid. About everything. But then, aren’t we all? If any single voice could represent this particularly bewildering era, it...
Britney, Soho Theatre review - finding the funny in a brain...
A brain tumour isn't usually the subject of a comedy show but Britney, written and performed by comedy duo Charly Clive and Ellen...
World War Z review - bloodthirsty fun with the zombie apocal...
Based on the 2006 book of the same name, and set in the same universe as the 2013 film...
DVD: The House by the Sea
Robert Guediguian has spoken of the influence of Chekhov on The House by the Sea (Le Villa), and the shadow of the Russian dramatist,...
Banine: Days in the Caucasus review - revolutions, pogroms a...
By fifteen Ummulbanu Asadullayeva — or Banine, to call her by the name under which she wrote and translated — had already lived more than most of...
Reissue CDs Weekly: Terry Allen
Torso Hell tells the story of an American soldier whose limbs were blown off in Vietnam. Amazingly, he and his buddies survived, and in...
CD: The Cranberries – In the End
In the End, the final album by Limerick band the Cranberries arrives three decades after they first formed and just over a year after...
Brockes-Passion, AAM, Egarr, Barbican review - fleshly Hande...
Whips, scourges, sinews, blood and pus: where Bach’s two Passions...
SS Mendi: Dancing the Death Drill, Isango Ensemble, Linbury...
While Bach's and Handel's Passions have been driving thousands to contemplate suffering, mortality and grace, this elegy for black lives lost over...