Opera
edward.seckerson
If you should take your seats prematurely in the London Coliseum you’ll find yourself confronted with a group of serving British soldiers. You’ll shift a little uneasily under their gaze. There they are, staring, smoking, loitering; there we are, on a visit to the opera. There’s a disconnect. Among those soldiers is Wozzeck (Leigh Melrose), the eponymous anti-hero of Alban Berg's operatic masterpiece. And since it's not too often that stagings of the opera actually address the issue of his profession there is an added immediacy. This is the here and now of a Britain effectively still caught Read more ...
David Nice
An operatic truism still doing the rounds declares that for Verdi's Il trovatore you need four of the greatest singers in the world. For Don Carlo, his biggest opus in every way, you need six. Nicholas Hytner's Covent Garden staging hits the mark third time around with five, the exception being a very honourable replacement for what would have been an interesting piece of casting. Add to the mix the experienced command of Royal Opera music director Antonio Pappano, supportive of the singers but also attentive to every instrumental detail, and it's as near to Verdian perfection as we're Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
I’m not one to get misty-eyed over La bohème (unless it be a red mist of rage), but this second revival of Jonathan Miller’s production at English National Opera brought me closer than any yet to understanding the snuffling, lip-quivering reactions of those around me in the Coliseum stalls. And if it wasn’t exactly emotion that got me there, then perhaps it was something even better: sentimental delight in joyous, glorious music-making.La bohème has suffered more than most operas at the hands of clever directors and conceptual visions. But at this stage in his career Miller has nothing to Read more ...
David Nice
Highly sexed cockerels and cats, a lovesick lion and a ballet of frogs might not seem like a recipe, or rather a menagerie, for profundity. Yet in two ravishing French man (or child)-meets-beast fables for the stage, Poulenc and Ravel are quite capable of tearing at our heartstrings. That they did so unremittingly last night was very largely due to the supernaturally beautiful sounds master conjuror Stéphane Denève drew from the BBC Symphony Orchestra.Yet more than just the icing on the cake was the collective and individual presence of students from the Royal Academy of Music for Ravel's L' Read more ...
David Nice
Backed up by reasonably adventurous orchestral programming, lucky conductors can forge a strong Stravinsky evening by picking and mixing from his five ancient Greek rituals. Sir John Eliot Gardiner, unintentionally homaging the late Sir Colin Davis who at least in earlier days would have jumped to such a pairing, chose to celebrate his 70th birthday with the extremes of white balletic lyric poem Apollon musagète and hard-hitting blackest tragedy Oedipus Rex.Apollo’s celestial strings and the acerbic mix of brass with woodwind in Oedipus, all superbly aligned, guaranteed further contrasts. But Read more ...