Opera Reviews
Norma, English National OperaThursday, 18 February 2016
In the light of what follows, it's probably best to be clear that I'm completely behind the artistic side of ENO in rejecting a 25 per cent reduction of the chorus's annual salary, tied to a shorter season. A full-time chorus of this size is the heart of a big company – without it, no Mastersingers, no Grimes, no Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Read more... |
Dido and Aeneas, Armonico Consort, Theatre Severn, ShrewsburyMonday, 15 February 2016
Spoiler Alert. It’s Act Three of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. The witches have done their worst, Aeneas is about to take ship, and the tenor Guy Simcock steps forward as the drunken sailor to sing what – as music director Christopher Monks has confided to us before the overture – will be his first solo role with Armonico Consort. Read more... |
The Barber of Seville, Welsh National OperaSunday, 14 February 2016
The latest themed season from WNO, to add to their fallen women, Donizetti queens and what not, goes by the slightly worrying title (for anyone with a short attention span) of “Figaro Forever”, and consists of an operatic sequence derived from Beaumarchais’ three Figaro plays and ending with a new opera by Elena Langer partly based on the last of them, La mère coupable. Read more... |
The Magic Flute, English National OperaSaturday, 06 February 2016
“We are at a time of present crisis.” When Sarastro addressed his boardroom of business-suited acolytes last night, there can’t have been many in the Coliseum whose thoughts didn’t turn to English National Opera. Even by the standards of a company that has spent most of its history fighting for survival, 2015 was a year of unprecedented difficulty. Read more... |
The Devil Inside, Peacock TheatreFriday, 05 February 2016
"I wish I had money," exclaims the weak-willed hero of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress and, hey presto, the devil appears to strike a deal. Auden and Kallman didn't have the last word on Faustian-pact librettos. Read more... |
L'Étoile, Royal OperaTuesday, 02 February 2016
Why have all attempts to make French comic opera funny to British audiences fallen so flat, at least since ENO's 1980s Orpheus in the Underworld? Read more... |
Alder, Hulett, Classical Opera, Page, Wigmore HallWednesday, 20 January 2016
Unlike Schubert, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich, Mozart composed nothing astoundingly individual before the age of 20. That leaves any odyssey through his oeuvre, year by year – this one will finish in 2041, by which time I’ll be nearly 80 if I live that long – with a problem effectively solved by Ian Page and his Classical Opera in placing works by contemporaries of various ages alongside young Amadeus’s efforts. Read more... |
Tosca, Royal OperaTuesday, 12 January 2016
To say this latest revival of the Royal Opera’s Tosca peaks early would be an understatement. The shockwaves rippling out from the brass and timpani in the first few bars set the auditorium rumbling, tumbling the strings into motion. Conductor Emmanuel Villaume seizes his audience and refuses to let go, dragging us in to join the dance of the Sacristan’s sleekly self-satisfied music with its sacrilegious whiff of the Palm Court. Read more... |
Pelléas et Mélisande, LSO, Rattle, BarbicanSunday, 10 January 2016
Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande is a drama played out in shadow. Shine too bright, too unyielding a directorial light on it, and the delicate dramatic fabric – all unspokens and unspeakables – frays into air. Just over a year ago, director David Edwards and the Philharmonia Orchestra gave us a semi-staging of exquisitely allusive simplicity, leaving the music to fill the gaps between symbol and emotion. Read more... |
Best of 2015: OperaWednesday, 30 December 2015
How ironic that English National Opera turned out possibly the two best productions of the year after the Arts Council had done its grant-cutting worst, punishing the company simply, it seemed, for not being the irrationally preferred Royal Opera. Read more... |
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