18th century
alexandra.coghlan
A cheeky series of signs raised at the start of Phelim McDermott’s new Così fan tutte for English National Opera promise “Big Arias”, “Intrigue”, “Lust” and “Chocolate” (among other things). Big pledges, all. And almost all delivered by this witty, exuberant and quietly revisionist production of Mozart’s challenging comedy.The two young couples find themselves on holiday in Coney Island in the late 1950s, swapping twinsets, sensible flats and suppressed desires for the wild delights of the fair, where men wear lycra, women wear beards (and little else), and no fantasy or fetish remains Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
Last time I saw Apollo's Fire perform they danced. Halfway through the concert the chamber orchestra just put music stands aside, continued playing their instruments, and broke into a stately minuet on the Wigmore Hall stage. Nothing quite so unexpected happened at their second London appearance this week at St John's Smith Square, but that same maverick energy was still there, translated this time into some quirky programming and some serious energy from Cleveland's favourite early music group.It helped that they were joined by French soprano Sandrine Piau. A favourite collaborator of Read more ...
David Nice
Mozart usually makes a fine concert bedfellow for his most devoted admirer among later composers, Richard Strauss. With the proviso that the 39th rather than the 38th Symphony would have made a better prologue to excerpts from Der Rosenkavalier last night – Mozart's later work has a minuet which Strauss imitates in the breakfast badinage of his Marschallin and Octavian, while the “Prague” Symphony has none – Sir Mark Elder made the companionship shine last night. The Barbican Hall took on a brightness for the Mozart, while the hall dazzled and spun as it must in any great Rosenkavalier Read more ...
Matthew Wright
Reason, tolerance, liberalism…these are the qualities that defined the Georgian Age, and for which it deserves to be better known, and more widely admired. Lucy Worsley stated her argument with admirable clarity in the opening moments of the programme, and her intellectual confidence and rigour made this one of the most informative and enjoyable of the many recent BBC history series. Worsley breezed through the historical landscape of the age, uncovering crucial aspects of politics, religion, art, satire, and finance. She span a fascinating web of connections and created a vivid portrait of Read more ...
Jasper Rees
The last time the BBC dramatised the creation of a great musical work, it didn’t quite hit the spot. Eroica starred Ian Hart as Beethoven glowering at the heart of a drama which had rather less of a narrative through-line than the symphony it honoured. For Messiah at the Foundling Hospital, the BBC have gone to the other extreme and kept eggs out of the one basket. There was a bit of drama, a bit of documentary, some costumed musical performance and there were even two presenters to come at the story from opposite angles. The potential for hodge-podgery was considerable.The story of Coram’s Read more ...
Marina Vaizey
Initiating the tercentenary of the arrival of the Hanoverians and thus the foundation of our German royal family, this startling and beguiling exhibition of the work of the polymath William Kent (1685-1748) crams 200 objects – drawings, paintings, plans, photographs, furniture, illustrations, models – into an illusionistic array of gauzy rooms, evocative of real interiors. The profusion is deliberate. Long before art nouveau, Kent’s interiors left no surface without rich ornament. His own admirations are clear; the exhibition shows us at its very beginning marble busts modelled Read more ...
David Nice
Jean-Philippe Rameau, the most radical and inventive of French composers before Berlioz, died in Paris 250 years ago this September. 16 years later a gem among theatres opened its doors for the first time with a long evening’s entertainment including Racine’s Athalie, supported by an incidental score from the resident music master Franz Beck.There I caught in full, startling production flight not the Rameau opera which most often turned up in the Grand-Théâtre de Bordeaux's early repertoire, Castor et Pollux, but what was originally called a "ballet heroïque", Les Indes galantes. You can hear Read more ...
David Nice
If they asked me, I could write a book about the way one number in Richard Jones’s ENO production of Handel’s Rodelinda – the only duet, after 18 arias, and nearly two hours into the action – looks, sounds and moves. Because it doesn’t happen often in opera that all the elements combine for total musical theatre that stuns: in this case, two great voices – Rebecca Evans’s soprano and Iestyn Davies’s countertenor – at what sounds like the peak of their stylish careers, an orchestra under the exceptional Christian Curnyn totally fused with what’s happening on stage, and an ingenious set from Read more ...
graham.rickson
John Adams: Harmonielehre, Doctor Atomic Symphony, Short Ride in a Fast Machine Royal Scottish National Orchestra/Peter Oundjian (Chandos)Harmonielehre's opening E minor chords ring out with unusual force in this swiftly-paced performance. The benchmark performance remains Michael Tilson Thomas's recent live San Francisco Symphony version, but this new one has some sensational moments. The RSNO's brass and percussion acquit themselves brilliantly, and Chandos's sound is punchy and immediate. Peter Oundjian understands the work's structure, allowing the repetitive ostinati to register as music Read more ...
David Nice
Oslo is a winter wonderland, and adults seem to be outnumbered by children, flocking from all over Norway to Disney on Ice. It’s the deep snow and the silence in pockets of the city rather than the kids which make me wonder if anyone has set Handel’s Alcina in the icy lair of C S Lewis’s White Witch, with hero Ruggiero as Edmund fed Turkish delight from the magic phial. There's even a captive lion. Francesco Negrin’s straightforwardly magical production - look, no metatext! - at the sparkling newish Oslo Opera House does a fine job conjuring a snow-free magic island full of adult sexual Read more ...
stephen.walsh
As before, WNO have a theme for their new opera season: this time it’s Fallen Women, a topic that might well attract the attention of the Equal Opportunities Commission. Surely men have the right to fall as well; we await, in June, The Fall of the House of Usher, a much fairer piece than Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, which opened the company’s winter season in a new production by the Polish director Mariusz Treliński. In Debussy’s Usher brother and sister both fall, and the house falls on top of them.Treliński is in any case much taken with the theme. Not only is his Manon (Chiara Taigi) already Read more ...
alexandra.coghlan
The Barbican’s ongoing season of baroque operas and oratorios has been a mixed bag. Most recently The Sixteen’s Jephtha was a rather lacklustre affair, leaving me nervous of committing to the many hours of Handel’s beautiful (but protracted) Theodora. But I needn’t have worried. Harry Bicket and The English Concert gave this late work all the pep and personality that was so lacking last week, driving it through its rather uneven acts to a conclusion of sudden pathos and beauty.It helped that Bicket had booked a dream-team of soloists, led by Rosemary Joshua as chilly heroine Theodora Read more ...