Opera Reviews
L'heure espagnole, Grange Park Opera online review - seduction and sandwiches in 60 minutesTuesday, 30 March 2021
Some production concepts seem so obvious, in retrospect, that you wonder why they haven’t been tried more often. Traffic hums in the foreground in the opening shots of Grange Park Opera’s new film of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole, the passing cars reflected in the window of an antique clock dealer’s store. Read more...
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Siegfried, Göteborg Opera online review - a hero for our timesMonday, 29 March 2021
The team of Stephen Langridge (director), Alison Chitty (design) and Paul Pyant (lighting) produced a quietly radical Parsifal at the Royal Opera in 2013, finding both beauty and horror in unexpected corners. Read more... |
Der Rosenkavalier, Bavarian State Opera online review - myth-making magicMonday, 22 March 2021
Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time stalk this haunting dream of a Rosenkavalier. The love games of teenager Octavian and his experienced mistress the Marschallin are sexy and plausible; the comedy of ridiculous Baron Ochs keeps a low profile, but stays real and turns out funny in unexpected places; a winged old gentleman (Ingmar Thilo) embodies the second and fourth manifestations. Read more... |
Die tote Stadt, Komische Oper Berlin, OperaVision review – when catharsis goes missingThursday, 04 March 2021
A word about grief. Many of us have learned a lot about it this past year; many knew about it before that. When someone we love dies, we grieve. This is normal. This is human. It is agony, but it’s not actually a mental illness. Having Paul, the hero (or anti-hero) of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die tote Stadt be marched off stage by those in white coats at the end is therefore not only a directorial cop-out. Read more... |
Tony and the Young Artists, Royal Opera/Liebeslieder Waltzes, Blackheath Halls online review - love and joyTuesday, 23 February 2021
Young performers seeking platforms for their careers have had it especially rough over the past year, most slipping through the financial-support net and now facing the further blow of the Brexit visa debacle. So it’s always good to welcome quality streamings supporting their progress. Read more... |
Der Freischütz, Bavarian State Opera online review – marksmen as marketeersMonday, 15 February 2021
Bavarian State Opera has led the way for live performances and associated broadcasts during the pandemic. Their series of weekly “Montagsstück” events have presented innovative chamber operas, specifically for web streaming. Their next goal is full-size opera with a live audience. That is not possible yet, so instead they are premiering a new production of Weber’s Der Freischütz. Read more... |
Hansel and Gretel, Scottish Opera online - bewitching feast for ears but not eyesFriday, 12 February 2021
Christmas isn’t just for Christmas, Daisy Evans’s bargain-basement fir-trees-and-tinsel production of Humperdinck’s evergreen masterpiece seems to be telling us. Read more... |
Netrebko, Met Stars Live in Concert online review - flashy performance from operatic powerhouseTuesday, 09 February 2021
Though the global pandemic has brought about an unprecedented degree of isolation, it’s also, in unusual ways, brought us together too. Visiting New York’s Metropolitan Opera House is currently an impossible dream - the house is still completely dark. Read more... |
The Turn of the Screw, OperaGlass Works online review - the fright is in the filmingTuesday, 02 February 2021
It’s second time lucky for OperaGlass Works, whose previous production at Wilton’s Music Hall, of Stravinsky’s The Rake's Progress, hit the mark for me in the singing but not the staging. I suspect that had we been there in the auditorium with performers all too palpable, the same might have been true of The Turn of the Screw in this venue. Read more... |
Holy Sonnets/The Heart's Assurance/A Charm of Lullabies, English Touring Opera online review - darkest hoursFriday, 29 January 2021
“Death, be not proud, though some have called thee/ Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.” John Donne’s Holy Sonnets may summon all his art of wit and paradox to mock that might and dread; still, we sense the abject terror behind the formal acrobatics of the verse. Benjamin Britten wrote his great settings of these great poems after a visit to the liberated Bergen-Belsen camp with Yehudi Menuhin in summer 1945. Read more... |
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