Opera Reviews
The Coronation of Poppea, Opera NorthSunday, 05 October 2014
Tim Albery’s production of Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea takes plenty of liberties. There are moments when you scratch your head, quietly sigh, and think about your interval drink, or what you’ll eat when you get home. Read more...
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L'Incoronazione di Poppea, The Academy of Ancient Music, Howarth, Barbican HallSunday, 05 October 2014
Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea is an opera with a one-track mind. The music throbs and pulses with dancing desire, suspensions and elaborate embellishments defer gratification, while recitative is poised constantly on the edge of melodic climax. Desire is everywhere, from the innocent flirtations of a young courtier and his lady, to the hopeless love of Ottone and of course the knowing, mature passions of the Emperor Nerone and his mistress Poppea. Read more... |
Moses in Egypt, Welsh National OperaSaturday, 04 October 2014
So easily parcelled up as a master of opera buffa, Rossini is a composer who constantly surprises by the emotional and intellectual range of his best work. William Tell, which opened WNO’s current season three weeks ago, is a major progenitor of Verdi, even arguably Wagner: grand opera devoid of what Wagner himself called effects without causes. Read more... |
The Girl of the Golden West, English National OperaFriday, 03 October 2014
So now it’s Minnie Get Your Gun from the director who brought us the gobsmackingly inventive Young Vic Annie (as in sharpshooter Oakley, not Little Orphan). Read more... |
Piau, Les Paladins, Correas, Wigmore HallThursday, 02 October 2014
2014 is the 250th anniversary of the death of Jean-Philippe Rameau, France’s baroque giant and maverick. To say that the UK celebrations have been muted is to put in generously, reconfirming a national trend that has long sidelined this repertoire in favour of more familiar Italian and German contemporaries. So it was especially good to see the Wigmore Hall full for an anniversary concert from instrumental ensemble Les Paladins and soprano Sandrine Piau. Read more... |
DiDonato, Lyon Opera Orchestra, Minasi, Barbican HallFriday, 26 September 2014
At the end of last night’s giddy, triumphant concert at the Barbican, Joyce DiDonato was presented with a bouquet by a member of the audience. It included, among more conventional flowers, a tomato plant, complete with ripe tomato. That says it all really. Just imagine Netrebko, Gheorghiu or even Bartoli faced with a tomato and the confusion that would ensue. Read more... |
Carmen, Mid Wales OperaFriday, 26 September 2014
It’s only a few days since I was remarking, à propos the WNO revival, that Carmen usually survives its interpreters. Now WNO’s humble neighbour, Mid Wales Opera, are proving the same point, but in a more positive spirit, by touring a new production by Jonathan Miller, with a vastly reduced orchestra, a cast of fourteen including chorus, and a set (Nicky Shaw) made up of moveable stagings cleverly lit (by Declan Randall), like some highly simplified Chirico. Read more... |
Carmen, Welsh National OperaSaturday, 20 September 2014
Popularity is all very well, but it can be a poisoned chalice. Braving the umpteenth revival of Carmen at WNO (original directors Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser, revival director Caroline Chaney), I began to experience that sense of weariness that sometimes afflicts the dutiful end of the repertoire: Bizet’s masterpiece along with the relentless Butterflies and Toscas, the Figaros and Barbers. Read more... |
Xerxes, English National OperaTuesday, 16 September 2014
Nicholas Hytner’s 1988 Magic Flute may have trilled its last at English National Opera, but judging by the wit, the joy and the energy on display last night it would be absolutely criminal to put the director’s even more elderly Xerxes out to pasture – the show that brought Handel back into fashion when it premiered in 1985. Read more... |
Otello, English National OperaSunday, 14 September 2014
From one great operatic storm to another. 2014 opened at English National Opera with David Alden’s Peter Grimes, gale-tossed and wet with sea-spray, and now the director turns his attention to Verdi’s Otello. Restlessly urgent, Edward Gardner’s opening assaulted us with timpani thunderclaps, stabbing into the silent auditorium as Otello himself would do just a few hours later. Read more... |
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