Opera
Fidelio, English National OperaThursday, 26 September 2013
The first words we hear don’t belong to Fidelio at all. The first music does, but not at all where you expect to find it. If you’ve read your programme (and who does before the show begins?) you’ll find a poem entitled “Labyrinth” by Jorge Luis... Read more... |
Elektra, Royal OperaTuesday, 24 September 2013
“Strike again,” cries Elektra as her brother stabs their mother to death. It’s third strike lucky for this Covent Garden production of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s singular mythic horror. In previous manifestations of designer-... Read more... |
American Lulu, Young VicThursday, 19 September 2013
We all know the drill: Wedekind’s Lulu is a page men have written on through the centuries, the canvas on which they have painted their desires, the feminine void they have filled. The patriarchy have appropriated her, and the perverts, and now it’s... Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Royal OperaTuesday, 17 September 2013
Revivals, especially at Covent Garden, too often wrong-foot high expectations. This one should have shone, with two known treasures among the cast (Lucy Crowe and Luca Pisaroni), an experienced Mozart conductor in John Eliot Gardiner and a handsome-... Read more... |
Rigoletto, LSO, Noseda, BarbicanMonday, 16 September 2013
This season opener was about closure too. The London Symphony Orchestra was back at the office last night, but this fresh stretch of concerts opened with an opera it has been performing while also acquiring a suntan in Aix-en-Provence. A new cast of... Read more... |
Maria Stuarda, Welsh National OperaSaturday, 14 September 2013
Last week Anne Boleyn, this week Mary Queen of Scots. Donizetti’s trawl through the Tudor monarchs and their victims was more a recurrent obsession than a systematic exploration. WNO, on the other hand, seem to be implying some Ring-like continuity.... Read more... |
Paul Bunyan/The Secret Marriage, British Youth Opera, Peacock TheatreThursday, 12 September 2013
It’s raining Bunyans, and since Britten’s early American operetta with its sights originally set on Broadway teems with song and invention that can’t be a bad thing. A fortnight after Welsh National Youth Opera commandeered Stephen Fry to voice-over... Read more... |
Wagner at the Proms rememberedSunday, 08 September 2013
This summer, the Royal Albert Hall became the centre of the Wagnerian universe. No one was going to ignore Bayreuth, where Frank Castorf‘s new Ring gave plenty of fuel for column inches; but somehow the singers and the orchestra seem to have got... Read more... |
Anna Bolena, Welsh National OperaSunday, 08 September 2013
“Let the florid music praise,” sing Britten and Auden in their On This Island cycle; and I suppose we must do as we’re told, though aesthetic duty can be a hard taskmaster. For me it cracks its whip in the three Donizetti operas that, inexplicably,... Read more... |
Prom 72: Calleja, Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, ZhangFriday, 06 September 2013
It was too little too late to redress the scant attention gives to Verdi’s bicentenary at this year’s Proms but the “Maltese Tenor” – Joseph Calleja – arrived with an eleventh hour offering of low-key Verdi arias and joining him was the Milanese... Read more... |
Prom 60: Billy Budd, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, DavisWednesday, 28 August 2013
You may well ask whether theartsdesk hasn’t already exhausted all there is to say about Glyndebourne’s most celebrated Britten production of recent years. I gave it a more cautious welcome than most on its first airing, troubled a little by the... Read more... |
Prom 57: Parsifal, Hallé, ElderMonday, 26 August 2013
So for one last time this season the impossible colosseum of Albertopolis became the Wagnerian holiest of holies – to be precise, the Cathedral of the Holy Grail - and once again I fell in love with the beast transfigured. Justin Way, the one artist... Read more... |
