Opera Reviews
Faust, Royal OperaMonday, 19 September 2011
That Faust - Gounod's curdled Victorian dessert of an opera, an overwhipped melange of melodrama and misogyny, topped with grand 19th-century dollops of religiosity - achieves a level of profundity that at one stage nearly had me in tears is an absolute miracle.
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Madam Butterfly, Opera NorthSunday, 18 September 2011
It’s easy to accuse opera companies in these straitened times of wanting to play safe. Opera North’s 2011-12 season is slightly slimmer than one would expect, but includes five new productions, and the revivals fully deserve their resurrection. Ruddigore is one. Tim Albery’s 1950s update of Madam Butterfly, first performed in 2007, is the other, and it's been given a classy resurrection here. Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Welsh National OperaSaturday, 17 September 2011
After a summer of operas set in what might tactfully be called fancy locations, it comes as a mild shock to return to Wales and a Don Giovanni that actually takes the composer’s instructions as its starting-point. John Caird, whose first ever production for WNO a few years back was Don Carlos, revisits Spain without a qualm. He gives us heavily embossed ironwork and carved oak, he gives us cowled monks and cloaked aristocrats. Read more... |
The Elixir of Love, English National OperaThursday, 15 September 2011
“An elixir with a kick, sir, one that really packs a punch”, sings Adina in Jonathan Miller’s Midwestern The Elixir of Love, and she couldn’t be more right. A night spent among the floral prints, perky ponytails and pastel wipe-down surfaces of this production is like being battered around the head with a bouquet of roses wielded by Doris Day. Read more... |
Il Trittico, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 13 September 2011
You don't need to buy into the loose hell-purgatory-paradise trajectory of Puccini's one-act operas to greet the triptych as his comprehensive masterpiece, full of wry interconnections, orchestral wizardry and grateful if tough vocal writing. Read more... |
BBC Proms: Der Freischütz, Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique, GardinerSaturday, 10 September 2011
What kind of work could possibly elbow aside the time-honoured ritual of performing Beethoven's Ninth on the penultimate (ie, the last serious) night of the Proms? The kind that even Beethoven was gobsmacked by. Read more... |
Die Frau ohne Schatten, Mariinsky Opera, Gergiev, Edinburgh Festival TheatreFriday, 02 September 2011
Under Western eyes, Gergiev’s Mariinsky forces had been turning to stone – like the titular shadowless woman's solipsistic husband in Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s polyphonic fairy tale – each time they stepped outside the Russian repertoire. There was the calamitous Verdi season at Covent Garden, and the ungainly Wagner Ring cycle which saw the opera company’s temporary twilight in London. In densest Strauss, the German word and the vital sense of movement arrived... Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Opera Up Close, Soho TheatreFriday, 26 August 2011
When you go to a trendy London performance "space" to watch an opera about rape and murder you should probably expect a few shocks. Or, if this ain’t your first Don Giovanni, you should expect not to be surprised by whatever provocations the director may have in store – which is much the same. What you probably don’t expect is for the overture to be played electronically and/or sound like it’s been remixed by Thom Yorke. But in Robin Norton-Hale’s "new ... Read more... |
BBC Proms: Rinaldo, Glyndebourne Festival OperaFriday, 26 August 2011
What was the audience on? They tittered when the bicycles came on, nearly cried when the whip was unleashed and virtually pissed themselves when the warring sides in Handel's crusader fantasy Rinaldo started fighting it out with hockey and lacrosse sticks (I know! Too-oo funny!). After last year's randy bunnies, Glyndebourne's Prom visits are fast becoming... Read more... |
The Emperor of Atlantis, Arcola TheatreWednesday, 17 August 2011
We critics often find ourselves "embarrassed by historical facts", as Craig Raine once put it. Raine was trying to explain why so many people still value Wilfred Owen's poetry - to him, the most overrated corpus of the 20th century. "[Owen's] life and death as a soldier make literary criticism seem invalid and pedantic," he argued, before proceeding to a very validly pedantic demolition job. Music has its own Wilfred Owens. Viktor Ullmann is one. His reputation (which was showcased last... Read more... |
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