Opera Reviews
Riccardo Primo, Britten Theatre, Royal College of MusicWednesday, 28 March 2012
No greater proof of the potency of the current Handel revival can be found than the London Handel Festival, now in its 35th year. The festival continues to fill concert halls and churches across London every Spring with the composer’s chamber repertoire, but it is the annual opera that remains unquestionably the main event. Read more...
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Miss Fortune, Royal OperaTuesday, 13 March 2012
I find it hard to square what I know about composer Judith Weir with what happened last night. In one corner lies her 30-year output of songs, choral pieces and operas - as engaging and beguiling an oeuvre as that of any living composer's. I think of her waggish song cycle King Harald's Saga or her playful opera A Night at the Chinese Opera. Read more... |
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Barbican TheatreWednesday, 29 February 2012
Love it or hate it Christopher Alden’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at English National Opera last year made quite the impact, banishing any fey woodland glades and general waftiness from Benjamin Britten’s opera and embracing a rather more astringent visual aesthetic. It’s unfortunate then that Martin Lloyd-Evans’s production for the Guildhall School of Music and Drama should follow so closely behind, begging comparisons that don’t best serve his World War II interpretation. Read more... |
Rusalka, Royal Opera HouseTuesday, 28 February 2012
Why has the Royal Opera not staged Dvořák’s Rusalka before now? I know there have been plausible distractions: the lock grip of Italian repertoire, fear of singing Czech, fixation with Dvořák as an instrumental composer, two world wars, a shortage of good water nymphs. But Sadler’s Wells gave the British premiere of this musically sumptuous "lyric fairytale" (its official description) as long ago as 1959. Read more... |
The Death of Klinghoffer, English National OperaSunday, 26 February 2012
In October 1985 four Palestinian terrorists boarded the Achille Lauro cruise liner, took the 400-odd passengers hostage, shot an old disabled American Jew dead and flung his body overboard. Of all the many atrocities in the long war between the Palestinians and Israelis the murder of Leon Klinghoffer has always struck me as being one of the more morally cut and dried incidents. Hardly worthy of any kind of lengthy debate, let alone dramatic exposition. Read more... |
La Clemenza di Tito, Barbican HallSaturday, 25 February 2012
To Charles Rosen it was a work of "rarely redeemed dullness". The wife of Emperor Leopold called it "German rubbish". It's pretty obvious why so many have objected to Mozart's final opera La clemenza di Tito. Tunes (memorable ones) are by and large lacking, which is odd for Mozart. The overture is not something you'd want to hear on its own. Read more... |
Beatrice and Benedict, Welsh National OperaSaturday, 18 February 2012
Such a pity about Beatrice and Benedict! As a musical visualiser, a creator of musical tableaux, a radio composer avant la lettre, Berlioz had few equals. The Damnation of Faust is surely the greatest radio opera ever written. But for some reason he had no grasp of the stage. Benvenuto Cellini is a lifeless succession of spectacular tableaux. Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Royal OperaMonday, 13 February 2012
When blithe Susanna and not the expected Cherubino emerges from hiding before the astonished Countess and enraged Count, the latter instantly back-pedals on the fury he has been heaping upon his seemingly faithless wife. She rounds on him: “Crudele, più quella non sono!” (“Traitor, I am no longer her”) and everything suddenly stops. It's a tiny two-beat rest that usually goes for nothing except the signal for a key change, but here the moment is charged with drama. Read more... |
La Traviata, Welsh National OperaSunday, 12 February 2012
Famously, at its Venice premiere in 1853, La traviata had trouble with the censor, not only over the salty innuendos of the plot, but over the simple fact that it was set in the present day and in contemporary costume. A rule like that would finish off most updated modern stagings (and no bad thing at that). But David McVicar’s now two-year-old staging of Verdi’s early verismo masterpiece in Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre wouldn’t be one of them. Read more... |
The Tales of Hoffmann, English National OperaSaturday, 11 February 2012
For all its comic fantasy and lilting tunes, there’s nothing pastel-coloured about Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann. Deaths are frequent and bloody, humour is macabre, and emotions run high – being late to the pub is cause enough for violence and conspiracy theories. It’s a world of sliding screens, where a smile always threatens to become a leer, a kiss a murder. Read more... |
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