Opera Reviews
Shakespeare 400 Gala, LPO, Jurowski, RFHSunday, 24 April 2016
Every year is Shakespeare year in theatre, opera house and concert hall. An anniversary's best, though, for those select few galas where the mind's made flexible by constant comparison between different Shakespearean worlds. Read more... |
Jenůfa, Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, Bělohlávek, RFHTuesday, 19 April 2016
Janáček's lacerating music-drama of love-led sin and redemption in a 19th century Moravian village is the opera I'd recommend as the first port of call for theatregoers wary of the genre. Its emotional truths are unflinching, its lyricism as constantly surprising as the actions of its characters are often swift and violent. In the opera house, I've never seen a performance that didn't turn its audience inside out. Read more... |
Rusalka, Scottish OperaFriday, 15 April 2016
For the gentleman next to me in the Festival Theatre, this was his second outing to see Rusalka. At the production premiere earlier this month in Glasgow, he had been “blown away” by Dvořák's lyric masterpiece. Given half a chance, I would go back to Edinburgh for the second and last performance in this run; not only because this is a brilliant, beautifully judged performance, but also because the opportunity might never come again. Read more... |
Lucia di Lammermoor, Royal OperaFriday, 08 April 2016
Lucia di Lammermoor is an opera in which men spend an awful lot of time talking about women, and very little actually talking to them. (Which, if nothing else, ensures a rather more dramatic denouement than a frank conversation about everyone’s hopes and dreams would produce.) Enter director Katie Mitchell and her “strong feminist agenda”, determined to give Donizetti’s women back their voices, and with them the agency every plot twist in the opera conspires to deny. Read more... |
The Importance of Being Earnest, Royal Opera, BarbicanWednesday, 30 March 2016
Some new operas worth their salt work a slow, sophisticated charm, but the handful that holler "masterpiece" grab you from the start and don't let go. Read more... |
Written on Skin, BarbicanSunday, 20 March 2016
You learn a lot about an opera in concert. Free from directorial and design intervention, the music can and must do it all. What is good is amplified, and what’s weak exposed. When that score is as psychologically rich and texturally varied as George Benjamin’s Written on Skin, the clarity of a concert performance can actually feel like a gain rather than a loss. Read more... |
Boris Godunov, Royal OperaTuesday, 15 March 2016
Russian bells and spinning tops dominate Richard Jones's predictably unpredictable take on Musorgsky's saga of a conscience-stricken Tsar. Latter-day purism tends to insist on the composer's seven-scene 1869 original – possibly for economic more than artistic reasons – and this two-hour-plus, interval-free whizz through seven years of Russian history is the most faithful to the first score I've heard. Read more... |
Ariodante, Britten Theatre, Royal College of MusicWednesday, 09 March 2016
The London Handel Festival is back, and instead of ploughing their usual furrow of rarely-seen works, this year’s opera is a classic. If the rest of Ariodante doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its two often-excerpted arias (“Dopo Notte” and “Scherza Infida”), then it’s still a deeply satisfying evening of music, with a large cast perfect for showing off the talents of the Royal College of Music’s student performers. Read more... |
Iphigénie en Tauride, English Touring OperaSunday, 06 March 2016
Gluck's two operas about the daughter of Agamemnon saved from sacrifice only to serve as priestess-butcher herself have found their level on the contemporary operatic stage. Read more... |
Akhnaten, English National OperaSaturday, 05 March 2016
What a load of balls. No, seriously. Globes, orbs, moons, suns, juggling balls, beach balls, er balls balls: if it’s spherical and pregnant with symbolism then you’re bound to find it somewhere on the props table for English National Opera’s Akhnaten. At the centre of Phelim McDermott’s new production of Philip Glass’s opera is a troupe of jugglers. Read more... |
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