Bizet
Prom 52, Carmen, Glyndebourne Festival review - fine-tuning a masterpieceFriday, 30 August 2024
If you ever doubted that Bizet’s Carmen, 150 years young next year, is one of the greatest operas of all time, this performance would have changed your mind. Among the four principals only Rihab Chaieb’s utterly convincing, consistent protagonist... Read more... |
First Person: Katharina Kastening on directing slimline Bizet in a year rich in 'Carmen' productionsSaturday, 06 July 2024
Peter Brook's reimagining of Bizet's Carmen condenses the scale of the original into a more intimate theatrical experience. The score has been starkly cut, the orchestra reduced, and only four singing roles remain: Carmen, Don José, Escamillo and... Read more... |
Carmen, Glyndebourne review - total musical fusionFriday, 17 May 2024
It’s what you dream of in opera but don’t often get: singers feeling free and liberated to give their best after weeks of preparation with a master conductor. Glyndebourne Music Director Robin Ticciati leads the way with a peerless London... Read more... |
Carmen, Royal Opera review - strong women, no sexual chemistry and little stage focusSaturday, 06 April 2024
When will the Royal Opera give us a totally electrifying Carmen, rather than just a vocally perfect Carmen (as Aighul Akhmetshina surely is)? Supposed firebrand Damiano Michieletto’s production is mostly tepid after Barrie Kosky’s half-brilliant... Read more... |
Carmen, English National Ballet review - lots of energy, even violence, but nothing new to sayWednesday, 03 April 2024
The story of Carmen is catnip to choreographers. No matter how many times this 180-year-old narrative has been tweaked and reframed in art, theatre, opera, dance and film, they keep coming back for more – which is curious when you consider that... Read more... |
Carmen review - curio from choreographer turned director Benjamin MillepiedSaturday, 03 June 2023
The inspirations for the directing debut of Benjamin Millepied, choreographer and dancer in Black Swan, are cited as Merimée’s novella Carmen and Pushkin’s narrative poem The Gypsies, the former better known as an opera guaranteed to raise the... Read more... |
The Pearl Fishers, Opera North review - focus on the mysteryWednesday, 17 May 2023
The Pearl Fishers is very much a mid-19th century Romantic opera, with a plot that’s basically a love triangle set in an exotic location. Its writers, Michel Carré and Eugène Cormon, were not the greatest of plot inventors, and after hearing the... Read more... |
Carmen, Queen Elizabeth Hall review - a flawed but fascinating retreadThursday, 02 June 2022
When Natalia Osipova comes a-calling, a choreographer doesn’t say no. The Bolshoi-trained ballerina, having commandeered all the prime roles in her nine years at the Royal Ballet, is always looking to conquer new territory. In a string of self-... Read more... |
Echo in the Canyon review – California droopin'Saturday, 13 June 2020
Echo in the Canyon is a lamentably thin documentary about the vibrant folk-rock music scene that flourished in the bohemian Los Angeles neighbourhood of Laurel Canyon from 1965 to 1967. Though it features priceless vintage footage of the Beach Boys... Read more... |
Classical CDs Weekly: Bizet, Gounod, Liszt, Heinz WinbeckSaturday, 23 May 2020
Bizet: Carmen Suite No. 1, Symphony No. 1 in C, Gounod: Petite Symphonie Scottish Chamber Orchestra/François Leleux (Linn)Initial impressions are disconcerting, the bass thwacks at the start of the first suite extracted from Bizet’s Carmen by... Read more... |
Kanneh-Mason, LMP, Martín, Fairfield Halls review – modest mastery on showTuesday, 14 January 2020
The soap-opera saga of the House of Windsor may not have been what the executive director of the London Mozart Players had in mind when she announced from the stage that Sheku Kanneh-Mason “is completely relevant for us”. Four years on from winning... Read more... |
Morison, RSNO, Järvi, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review – French romanceSaturday, 02 November 2019
To hear Neeme Järvi conduct the Royal Scottish National Orchestra is to witness one of the great musical partnerships, one that has evolved into an enduring friendship. It was in 1984 that the Estonian Järvi was appointed to succeed Sir Alexander... Read more... |
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