Opera Reviews

Road Rage, Garsington Opera

Roderic Dunnett Thursday, 25 July 2013

Garsington Opera, now based at John Paul Getty’s countrified home, the Wormsley Estate near Henley, has nipped a leaf out of Glyndebourne’s book and embarked on its first full-blooded Community Opera: a far cry from Vivaldi and Rossini, but not from Janáček (Garsington will stage The Cunning Little Vixen next season).

Prom 15: Die Walküre, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim

David Nice Wednesday, 24 July 2013

Things may be falling apart, a storm now rages but new broods of humans and demigoddesses have been fathered by chief god Wotan, who has undergone a Doctor Who like transformation from Iain Paterson into Bryn Terfel.

Prom 14: Das Rheingold, Staatskapelle Berlin, Barenboim

David Nice Tuesday, 23 July 2013

Swimming around in the Rhine is what most of us wanted to be doing on the hottest day of the year. A cooling, riverbed low E flat from Daniel Barenboim’s Berlin double basses, and then the staggered horn entries announced we were going to be in the finest sonic hands for two and a half hours – or nearly 15, if the colossal Proms Ring is to be accounted in its full, four-night glory.

La Bohème, Longborough Festival

stephen Walsh Sunday, 21 July 2013

Having spent most of the summer on Wagner’s Ring, Longborough are now giving, as a kind of bergamasque, an opera whose entire length would fit into the first act of Götterdämmerung. La Bohème is everything The Ring is not. It is concise, melodious, playful, sentimental and weepy. Yet oddly enough, it could never have been written without Wagner.

Capriccio, Royal Opera

David Nice Saturday, 20 July 2013

Richard Strauss’s lavish postscript to 50 years of music theatre is about so much more than the theme of its source, Salieri’s Prima la musica e poi le parole ("first the music and then the words", with a big invisible question mark). Its overall subject of rival claims in opera also embraces spoken drama, poetry, dance and specific bel canto, all of them marshalled by the most experienced of theatre directors.

Comment

Don Pasquale, Glyndebourne Festival Opera

stephen Walsh Friday, 19 July 2013

Her tongue firmly planted in her cheek, Mariame Clément grumbles in the Glyndebourne programme that Don Pasquale “poses no specific ‘conceptual’ challenge” to the opera director. Sighs of relief all round. Donizetti’s final comic masterpiece turns out to be “about” nothing but its own subtly nuanced retelling of the stock tale of the old buffer who plans to marry his ward, nephew’s sweetheart, or some such, but is outwitted by her with the help of a smart confederate.

Britten: The Canticles, Linbury Studio Theatre

David Nice Thursday, 11 July 2013

As good old Catullus put it, I hate and love, you may ask why. No doubt it's my job as a critic to probe such difficult responses to Britten's Canticles. Why am I so repelled by the sickly-sweet lullaby Isaac sings just before daddy's about to put him to the sword in Canticle II, then so haunted by the sombre war requiem of Britten's Edith Sitwell setting, Canticle III?

Fortunio, Grange Park Opera

stephen Walsh Thursday, 11 July 2013

André Messager is one of those fringe composers whose music you feel you know something about until you try to think of a specific piece. His ballet Les deux pigeons is still sometimes revived. But to students of French music, he’s actually best known as the conductor who brought Debussy’s Pelléas to the stage and conducted its first performance.

Britten and Poulenc at the Cheltenham Music Festival

David Nice Thursday, 11 July 2013

"Britten or Poulenc?" The question may seem a fatuous one, geared to the 100th anniversary of the Englishman's birth and 50 years since the Frenchman's death. Yet it certainly livens up what would otherwise be the usual dreary artists' biographies, presented with typical elan in this year's Cheltenham Music Festival programme book. "Has anyone said Poulenc in response to this?" asks pianist James Rhodes.

Double French: the 35th Buxton Festival

philip Radcliffe Monday, 08 July 2013

Retrieving buried rarities, many even by famous composers, is the cornerstone of the Buxton Festival, now in its 35th year. This time around, artistic director Stephen Barlow has plucked out a pair of 19th-century French comic operas by Saint-Saëns and Gounod, coupling them in a double bill to kick-start the Festival.