Opera
First Persons: Susan Bullock, Gerald Finley and Stephen Higgins on a 'Bluebeard's Castle' with a differenceThursday, 04 November 2021
Tonight a version of Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle launches in the intimate surroundings of Stone Nest, a former Welsh chapel in London's West End. Its conductor along with soprano Susan Bullock and baritone Gerald FInley, alternating in the roles of... Read more... |
'Everyone who played for him always gave their very best': remembering Bernard Haitink (1929-2021)Tuesday, 02 November 2021
Few musicians get to stage-manage a dignified departure from the world. Among his last compositions, Richard Strauss set a poem by Eichendorff depicting an old couple looking into the sunset and asking “is this perhaps death?”, and towards the end... Read more... |
HMS Pinafore, English National Opera review - shipshape classic comedy craftSaturday, 30 October 2021
Yes, it was bound to be HMS Laugh-a-minute, given Cal “One Man, Two Guvnors” McCrystal’s ENO comedy riffs on an already funny early G&S classic, but what does this tight little craft have to say to Little England today?That a British sailor’s “... Read more... |
Royal Opera House lullabies for Little AmalTuesday, 26 October 2021
“I want to tell her that people will be good,” Tewodros Aregawe of Phosphoros Theatre confided to us as Little Amal closed her eyes on the giant bed made up for her in the Paul Hamlyn Hall, “that all the people with kind eyes who have walked... Read more... |
The Rake's Progress, Glyndebourne Tour - a classic revitalizedMonday, 25 October 2021
Tom Rakewell Esquire, the Glyndebourne edition generally known as “the Hockney Rake” though it is very much director John Cox’s too, is 46 years old. The great Bernard Haitink, who conducted the first airing in 1975 at a time when Stravinsky's... Read more... |
Die ägyptische Helena, Fulham Opera review - mythological mess impressively handledWednesday, 20 October 2021
So Helen of Troy arrives at a church in Fulham via Poseidon’s island palace and a pavilion at the foot of the Atlas Mountains. She’s trickier than ever in the golden but tangled web Richard Strauss and his myth-and-symbol-mad poet Hugo von... Read more... |
Bernstein Double Bill, Opera North review - fractured relationships in song and danceMonday, 18 October 2021
Leonard Bernstein’s one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti enjoyed a relatively trouble-free gestation, at least compared to his other stage works. Its seven short scenes last around 50 minutes, Bernstein providing his own libretto and completing much of... Read more... |
Don Pasquale, Glyndebourne Tour review - winning comeback for a sturdy veteranTuesday, 12 October 2021
If it ain’t broke… on tour and in the Glyndebourne summer festival, Mariame Clément's production of Don Pasquale has gratified audiences for a decade now. It surely will again in Paul Higgins's spirited revival. The show returns to the Sussex house... Read more... |
First Person: director Frederic Wake-Walker on Glyndebourne's new 'Fidelio'Wednesday, 06 October 2021
2016Dear Diary, I’ve just had a meeting with Glyndebourne about directing a new production of Fidelio. I realise it’s one of the hardest operas in the repertoire to direct but I’m so swept up in Beethoven’s vision, the power of the music and the... Read more... |
Jenůfa, Royal Opera review - Janáček scours the soul again in a compelling new takeWednesday, 29 September 2021
At the heart of Janáček’s searing music-drama, and the pioneering play by another remarkable Czech, Gabriela Preissová, on which it is based, are two strong women trapped in a conventional community whose intelligence goes to waste and whose lives... Read more... |
Madam Butterfly, Welsh National Opera review - decent performance, disagreeable contextWednesday, 29 September 2021
It’s easy enough to see the difficulty Madam Butterfly places your thinking director in. I share her pain. What the whirring brain will quickly see as a penetrating, or at least surface scratching, study of a whole repertoire of modern obsessions –... Read more... |
The Midsummer Marriage, LPO, Gardner, RFH review – Tippett’s cornucopia shines in fits and startsSunday, 26 September 2021
British opera’s attempted answer to The Magic Flute, and its presentation as the opening gambit of Edward Gardner’s eminent position as principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, leave me queasily ambivalent.After all the smoke and... Read more... |
