Opera Reviews
Werther, Opera NorthSunday, 27 September 2009Werther is based on the young Goethe’s semi-autobiographical epistolary novel which tells of a young artist’s thwarted love for a simple country girl who is already engaged. First performed in Vienna in 1892, it is audibly a product of that time. You can hear the predominant influence of Wagner in piquant unresolved dissonances, suggestive of a fleeter-footed, gallic Tristan with added harps. The sheer depth and splendour of the music is what makes a potentially risible... Read more... |
Le Grand Macabre, ENOFriday, 18 September 2009
Door-sized detachable nipples, an angel of death with a dick to die for (literally), a cave of an arse housing a disco-dancing unit of storm troopers and an all-singing all-dancing couple of randy cadavers. Ever wondered what the Europeans might have done if they’d ever got hold of the Carry On brand? The ENO’s new production of Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre offers up one possibility. Read more... |
Don Carlo, Royal OperaTuesday, 15 September 2009
It finally came just over three hours in. Ferruccio Furlanetto’s gouty Philip II leans his elbow on his chair and begins to grind his head into his right-hand like he's a human pestle and mortar. He first castigates himself for ever having thought that his wife, Elizabeth of Valois - who he suspects of sleeping with his son, Don Carlos - might have fancied his unyielding, aged presence, and then tries to sing his way out of his tortured predicament. Read more... |
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
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...
Oscars 2025: long day's journey into 'Anora'
Amid these troubling times, can we not all live in the world of the 2025 Oscars' runaway success story, an ever-smiling Sean Baker? That thought...
Hylozoic/Desires: Salt Cosmologies, Somerset House and The H...
The railways that we built in India may be well known, but I bet...
Album: Jethro Tull - Curious Ruminant
Folk rock has long been one of Jethro Tull’s strongest suits. Ian Anderson’s integration of...
Alterations, National Theatre review - high emotional costs...
Plays about the Windrush Generation are no longer a rarity, but it’s still unusual for revivals of black British classics to get the full...
Uprising, Glyndebourne review - didactic community opera sup...
The score is effective, and rewarding to perform, but derivative. The libretto uses every cliché, or truism, about save-the-planet youth activism...
Music Reissues Weekly: Kraftwerk - Autobahn at 50
“German space rock group is already shooting up the charts with their debut US LP. One of few continental groups able to make this musical mode...
Mahan Esfahani, Wigmore Hall review - shimmering poise and r...
To watch Mahan Esfahani play the harpsichord is to watch a philosopher at work. While...
Album: Architects - The Sky, The Earth & All Between
Brighton metallers Architects have weathered various tribulations in their almost 20-year career. Formed by twins Dan and Tom Searle, after...
Jopy/Lemonsuckr/King of May, Green Door Store, Brighton revi...
There’s something exhilarating about seeing bands right at the very, very dawn of their careers. Will they be headlining the Houston Astrodome in...