Opera Reviews
Linda di Chamounix, Royal OperaTuesday, 15 September 2009
The hills are alive with the sound of... well, Donizetti, actually. His mature "Melodramma Semiserio" Linda di Chamounix arrived towards the climax of a prolific career in opera and was clearly a late attempt to capitalise on his successes and give his adoring audiences a little of everything and at great length. This season-opener concert performance at the Royal Opera (recorded, incidentally, by Opera Rara...
Read more...
|
Così fan tutte, Grand Theatre, LeedsSaturday, 12 September 2009The film critic Mark Kermode maintains that if a film is advertised on the side of a bus, it will inevitably be rubbish. Opera North are advertising this revival of Tim Albery’s 2004 Così fan tutte extensively on the sides of buses here in Leeds. Kermode’s theorem evidently doesn’t hold for opera. Read more... |
Doctor Atomic, ENOTuesday, 23 June 2009
Among the most astonishing moments in John Adams's new opera Doctor Atomic (currently running at the English National Opera) is an aria at the end of the first act. The eponymous brains behind the Manhattan Project, Dr J. Robert Oppenheimer, stands alone on stage with his new creation, a spherical A-bomb coated in wires and tubes like a patient in intensive care, and sings John Donne's holy sonnet "Batter my heart, three-person'd God". Read more... |
Pages
latest in today
There is star casting, and there is casting the right star – not the same thing. The...
Every lover of folk-tales knows that the seeker has to endure dangers and setbacks before they finally win the prize. Last night, the ever-...
John Webster’s sour, bloody tale of brotherly greed and vice has been updated by the playwright Zinnie Harris, who also directs her own...
Queer
William Burroughs’ eponymous novel was nearly...
Christian Gerhaher, the most compelling and complete interpreter of German...
An incendiary play has opened at the Marylebone, the adventurous venue just off Baker Street. Bigger houses were apparently unwilling...
It’s common to say that Shakespeare would have liked such-and-such a modern story, but I think he actually might have gone for this one. The Bard’...
Straddling the USA Presidential elections,...
There’s a real bind for Kylie Minogue. Her core audience want disco...
How many times does a politician survive wave after wave of attack from rivals, surf the waves of fickle voters and tiptoe around every policy...