Opera Reviews
Lessons in Love and Violence, Royal Opera review - savage elegance never quite glows red-hotFriday, 11 May 2018
A rope is mercy; a razor-blade to the throat, a kiss; a red-hot poker… But, of course, we never get anything so literal as the poker in George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s elegant, insinuating retelling of Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II. Read more...
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Eugene Onegin, Scottish Opera review - sweepingly sumptuous TchaikovskySaturday, 28 April 2018
It’s 25 years since Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin last came to the Scottish Opera stage, and this brand new production, directed by Oliver Mears, DIrector of Opera at The Royal Opera, gives the stirring score a stately yet elusive grandeur. Read more... |
4.48 Psychosis, Royal Opera, Lyric Hammersmith review - despairing truth in song and speechThursday, 26 April 2018
Depression, with or without psychotic episodes, is a rare subject for drama or music theatre - and with good reason: the sheer unrelenting monotony of anguish and self-absorption is hard to reproduce within a concentrated time-span. Read more... |
The Marriage of Figaro, English Touring Opera review - vanilla Mozart still tastes sweetThursday, 26 April 2018
The Fates did not want theartsdesk to review English Touring Opera’s new production of The Marriage of Figaro. Read more... |
Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Royal Opera review - bleak rigour and black comedy still cast a spellFriday, 13 April 2018
Anyone who's seen Richard Jones's rigorous production before will remember the makeover – Katerina Izmailova, bored and brutalised housewife released by sex and murder from her shackles, having her drab bedroom expanded and redecorated in deliberate incongruity with Shostakovich's most shattering orchestral music – and its polar opposite, the near-black horror of convicts in trucks by the river on... Read more... |
Bernstein's MASS, RFH review - polymorphousness in excelsisSaturday, 07 April 2018
Live exposure to centenary composer Leonard Bernstein's anything-goes monsterpiece of 1971, as with Britten's War Requiem of the previous decade, probably shouldn't happen more than once every ten years, if only because each performance has to be truly special. Read more... |
Coraline, Royal Opera, Barbican review - spooky story, underwhelming scoreThursday, 05 April 2018
With the eyes of musical fashion turned relentlessly on the calculating stage works of chilly alchemist George Benjamin, hopes ran high for a brighter spark in a new opera by his contemporary Mark-Anthony Turnage. Read more... |
The Marriage of Figaro, English National Opera review - sassy, probing and splendidly castFriday, 30 March 2018
One year to Brexit, a seemingly endless winter chill and Londoners need soul food, badly. I prescribe an evening of total immersion in The Marriage of Figaro. Read more... |
Ariadne auf Naxos, Scottish Opera review - superb singing in slick new productionTuesday, 27 March 2018
"The Show must go on". So say the posters dotted around Glasgow and Edinburgh for Scottish Opera's production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. Except on Thursday, it didn’t. Read more... |
Hansel and Gretel, RNCM, Manchester review – an urban dreamMonday, 19 March 2018
Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel is a ‘"fairytale opera" (its composer’s description), and yet one characteristic frequently commented on is its "Wagnerian" scoring. For this production, with David Pountney’s English translation, the RNCM used Derek Clark’s reduced orchestration. Read more... |
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