Opera Reviews
Be With Me Now, Britten Studio, SnapeThursday, 16 June 2016
As the hand-held credits popped up on screen to pianist and musical director Manoj Kamps's superb quartet arrangement of Mozart's Magic Flute Overture, the European Union's Culture Programme logo brought a spontaneous burst of applause. Not the norm for Suffolk this week, I'm told, but this audience knew how international opera is, how we're all connected in Europe's musical world. Read more... |
The Beggar's Opera, University of BirminghamWednesday, 15 June 2016
Memo to self: never read the director’s programme essay. Read more... |
The Iris Murder, Hebrides Ensemble, EdinburghTuesday, 14 June 2016
It just goes to demonstrate the breadth and ambition of the Hebrides Ensemble’s work. Read more... |
The Cunning Little Vixen, GlyndebourneMonday, 13 June 2016
Is The Cunning Little Vixen a jolly children’s pantomime, or is it a searching study of issues of life and death, Man and Nature? The answer, naturally, is that it’s both. Children dress up as animals, and sing and prance about. But at the same time grown-ups (both animal and human) dream and fantasize, couple and procreate, hunt and kill. Remarkably, it’s a tragedy that leaves no bitter taste. The heroine dies, but Nature goes on. Read more... |
La Bohème, Opera Holland ParkSunday, 12 June 2016
Boy meets girl; girl and boy fall in love; boy loses girl. In true bohemian fashion, La bohème can lay its operatic head anywhere from Paris to Peshawar, in any era from 90s punk to the Belle Epoque, and still make sense. What matters are the emotions; do we believe in the relationship between Rodolfo and Mimi, the camaraderie between Rodolfo and his friends? Read more... |
Illuminations, Tynan, Aurora Orchestra, Collon, Snape MaltingsSaturday, 11 June 2016
Nothing galvanises an audience quite like physical risk. As soprano Sarah Tynan rose on a hoop into the darkness, intoning the final words of "Départ" from Britten's song cycle Les Illuminations, you could almost hear her heart race. Beneath, a troupe of circus performers held the rope – and her life – in their hands. Read more... |
Tristan and Isolde, English National OperaFriday, 10 June 2016
"Bad Star Trek episodes" is how one director describes a certain unfortunate look in would-be intergalactic opera productions. The late Nikolaus Lehnhoff came perilously close to it in his Glyndebourne Tristan und Isolde but offered a coherent vision. Daniel Kramer, now ENO's Artistic Director, has a few "bad Star Trek episodes" and many good ideas that don't always join up or else outstay their welcome. Read more... |
Tannhäuser, Longborough Festival OperaFriday, 10 June 2016
Wagner was never satisfied with Tannhäuser, and it’s not hard to see why. Essentially a study of the tension between sensual and spiritual love, it was composed at a time when, by his own later confession, he lacked the resources to deal properly (that is, improperly) with the sensual element, and even in any profundity – one might feel – with the spiritual. The piece went through numerous revisions, extensions, compressions, tinkerings of one sort or another. Read more... |
Into the Woods, Opera North, West Yorkshire PlayhouseThursday, 09 June 2016
Opera North’s ongoing Ring isn’t taking up much of the chorus’s time, which presumably is one of the reasons that many of its members have decamped half a mile east to collaborate with the West Yorkshire Playhouse in an eye-popping new staging of Sondheim’s Into The Woods. That opera companies can and should stage Sondheim is vindicated by this production: the musical values are superb, my only niggle being that James Holmes’s excellent pit players are hidden offstage. Read more... |
Iris, Opera Holland ParkWednesday, 08 June 2016
"Better than Puccini," raved one Tweeter after the final rehearsal of Opera Holland Park's season-opener. Nonsense: "nearly as good as Puccini" is the best any of his Italian contemporaries could hope for; that applies to Leoncavallo and the Cilea of Adriana Lecouvreur. Read more... |
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