18th century
Thomas H. Green
Five years ago this Kneehigh Theatre production caused a stir with its vibrant modern retelling of John Gay’s 18th century satirical classic, The Beggar’s Opera. It’s currently on tour again and it’s easy to see why a revival was greenlit. It’s a bawdy story of political corruption with no sweet ending, not, in fact, that far from popular boxset dramas such as The Wire or Broadwalk Empire, but with a whole lot more silliness and songs.Set in a grimy, dream version of post-World War II austerity (there’s a running joke about the exoticism of bananas), the plot centres on super-criminal Read more ...
Florence Hallett
Placed in a long and artfully Arcadian vista, earthy bronze subdued against verdant grass and trees, the restless form of Henry Moore’s Two Piece Reclining Figure: Cut, 1979-81 (Main picture), both disrupts and is absorbed by its surroundings. A rampant limb rears snakelike, the energy in its writhing form arrested but not dissipated by a violently efficient cut slicing it in two. A cut this clean belongs to machinery and cold metal, not to nature, and it is the contrast with the gentle romance of Houghton Hall’s 18th century landscaping, complete with its Palladian folly, that draws out Read more ...
David Nice
Louise Alder, lyric soprano of the moment and vivacity incarnate, had yet to be born when John Eliot Gardiner made his first recording of Handel's Semele with the Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists in 1981. Now they all come together to prove that when it hits the music-theatre heights in Act 3, the first great English-language opera in all but name, premiered 275 years ago, could have been written yesterday. "Sexy," as the advance publicity claimed, it is not, but there's plenty of sensuous music as mortal Semele basks in Jupiter's love, and intense drama as she goes too far in Read more ...
Rachel Halliburton
Often the greatest works of dramatic absurdism spring from the worst extremes of human experience, whether it’s Ionesco’s Rhinoceros responding to fascism, or Havel’s The Garden Party satirising the irrational cruelties of Prague’s Soviet occupiers. In such dramas, absurdity becomes a powerful metaphor for the way totalitarian power seeks to undermine and warp reality, but in a work like The Glass Piano, in which absurdity is essentially a device for conveying the gently absurd, it’s less easy to see the point.The proposition is utterly fascinating: it’s based on the real life story of Read more ...
Miranda Heggie
For the final instalment of their three Matthew Passions this Holy Week, Ex Cathedra gave a large scale performance of Bach’s oratorio in their home town on Birmingham, after dates with lesser forces in London and Bristol. With an augmented orchestra and their regular chamber choir and orchestra joined onstage by Ex Cathedra’s Academy of Vocal Music - Ex Cathedra’s strand for young singers - and members of various community choirs in and around BIrmingham, the collective masses on stage made a full, fabulous sound, which filled Symphony Hall. That’s not to say that the increased number of Read more ...
Samir Savant
This is my third year as festival director of the London Handel Festival, an annual celebration of the life and work of composer George Frideric Handel, which takes place every spring in venues across the capital. Our core charitable and artistic objectives for the Festival are to explore the full repertoire of Handel, to bring the composer’s music to broader audiences and to continue his tradition of nurturing young talent. I have always known Handel’s music, having sung it since I was a boy, but it is only in recent years that I have come to discover the complex and loveable character Read more ...
Gavin Dixon
William Christie kicked off Passion season in London this year with a particularly sombre reading of the St John. The veteran conductor brought his French choir and orchestra, Les Arts Florissants, and a line-up of relatively young soloists to the Barbican. They turned out to be variable, but the best of the voices elevated proceedings, as did Christie’s sensitive shaping of the music, the results always lyrical and engaging.At the risk of labouring tired stereotypes, the performance here sounded more French than German. The orchestral tone was less distinct, quieter and lacking focussed in Read more ...
David Nice
Practitioners of musical authenticity and scholarly research, so guarded and protective of their territory in the early days, now like to spread the love around. So if an amateur choir of 100-plus like the BBC Symphony Chorus, celebrating its 90th anniversary, and selected members of a symphony orchestra want to tackle Bach's B minor Mass – as anyone in their right minds would wish to, since it's a monumental masterpiece – then they could hardly do better than entice the dynamic John Butt away from the small forces of his Dunedin Consort for a one-off spectacular.Or could they? As Butt beat Read more ...
Robert Howarth
I’m here in Leeds at the end of five weeks of quite intense rehearsals for Opera North's new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. Our director James Brining and his amazing team (including assistant director Deborah Cohen, set and costume designer Colin Richmond, and choreographer Tim Claydon) are putting it on the stage, and I’m ably assisted by George Jackson and Philip Voldman. Together we’re all unpicking and stitching the piece back together.What’s fascinating to me is that James and I are coming at this piece from quite different perspectives. He has worked with Opera North Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It can be fascinating to see ourselves as others see us. In this case, Athens-born director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Killing of a Sacred Deer, The Lobster) brings his acute eye to the English country-house period drama in a scintillatingly warped portrait of the dysfunctional court of Queen Anne.It’s the beginning of the 18th century, and England is struggling with the increasing costs of war with the French. The ageing and mentally erratic Anne (Olivia Colman) quails at the prospect of decision-making as preening politicians screech and chatter around her, wrestling for political advantage and Read more ...
graham.rickson
Josquin: Missa Gaudeamus, Missa L’ami Baudichon The Tallis Scholars/Peter Phillips (Gimell)That music composed in the 14th and 15th centuries can be enjoyed and performed today is mind-boggling. As is looking at one of Josquin des Préz’s manuscripts, close enough to conventional modern notation for even a hick like me to get an inkling of what the music might sound like. This latest Tallis Scholars release features two contrasting Masses, the mature Missa Gaudemas’s intensity set against the earlier, breezier Missa L’ami Baudichon. Peter Phillips has his three tenors sing the plainchant Read more ...
Jessica Duchen
The Italian pianist Federico Colli, 30, best known so far as winner of the 2012 Leeds International Piano Competition, last night arrived for his Wigmore Hall debut sporting an emerald-green cravat, but the sonic colours he magicked out of the piano quickly put its gleam in the shade. He is an artist developing at an impressive rate, and one of whom I think we’ll be hearing a great deal more in years ahead.Colli had nevertheless picked a somewhat unforgiving programme – a first half entirely of Scarlatti and a second of chewingly unremitting D minor – and if at times the result was more Read more ...