Donizetti
theartsdesk at the Buxton Festival: An Opera a DayTuesday, 19 July 2011
An opera a day keeps boredom at bay. There’s no danger of boredom in Buxton in mid-July. Set 1,000ft up in the Derbyshire hills, on the edge of the Peak District, and blessed with an Edwardian gem of an opera house, the old spa town is now well... Read more... |
L'elisir d'amore, Glyndebourne Festival OperaThursday, 09 June 2011
Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore must be the only opera from whose central lesson one can actually learn something. Its message - drink, chill out, back off and the girl will be yours - is as good a moral guide to life as any. But it was still... Read more... |
Don Pasquale, Opera Holland ParkWednesday, 08 June 2011
Nothing says summer opera quite like the skittish melodies and Neapolitan oom-pah-pah of a Donizetti overture. It doesn’t get much cheekier or more playful than this, the kind of music that makes you long for a pea shooter to pelt opera-goers with a... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Clonter: The Opera FarmSaturday, 07 May 2011
Deep in rural Cheshire farmland, music is in the air. It’s not the music of the spheres from the Jodrell Bank radio telescope nearby, nor even the sound of the birds and the bleating of the lambs nearby. It is the music of human voices at work on... Read more... |
Lucrezia Borgia, English National OperaMonday, 31 January 2011
When future historians write the story of 21st-century film, Mike Figgis will play a founding father-like role. Figgis's Timecode (2000) was one of the world's first and most ambitious digital films. I still remember the excitement the day I... Read more... |
Juan Diego Flórez, Royal Festival HallThursday, 20 January 2011
We’ve all seen singers go wrong. Forgetting words, missing entries, skipping verses – it happens often enough, and is generally cause for little more than some awkward laughter and a second attempt. Never, however, have I seen a wrong entry (as ill-... Read more... |
Don Pasquale, Royal OperaMonday, 13 September 2010
Anticipating revivals of productions that were hardly vivacious in the first place, you can always find reasons to hope. Perhaps there'll be a dazzling house debut. Maybe someone, preferably the revival director, will bring a more focused individual... Read more... |
Mary Stuart, Opera NorthSaturday, 05 June 2010
Among the many pleasures of Donizetti's Mary Stuart is the fun of watching a chunk of primary-school history filtered through a florid bel canto imagination. There are moments when you want to cry out, “That’s not what happened!” But it’s so fast-... Read more... |
What Makes a Great Tenor? BBC FourWednesday, 02 June 2010
Thus I approached What Makes a Great Tenor? in a spirit of moderate scepticism. Had appearing on Popstar to Operastar destroyed at a stroke the credibility of its presenter, the Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón? In a bid for the dreaded "accessibility... Read more... |
Lawrence Brownlee, Iain Burnside, St John's, Smith SquareWednesday, 26 May 2010
We might have expected that the rising young bel canto tenor Lawrence Brownlee would include “Ah! Mes amis… Pour mon âme” from Donizetti’s La fille du régiment (that’s the number with the nine top Cs) in his Rosenblatt recital at St John’s, Smith... Read more... |
Production Gallery: The Royal Opera's La Fille Du RégimentTuesday, 18 May 2010
Click on a picture for full view and to enter slideshowDessay (Marie) and Corbelli (Sulpice)Dessay (Marie) and Florez (Tonio)Florez (Tonio)Dessay (Marie) and the Vingt-et-unièmeDessay (Marie) and the Vingt-et-unièmeDessay (Marie), Dawn French (... Read more... |
La Fille Du Régiment, Royal OperaMonday, 17 May 2010
You can take the girl out of the barracks but you can’t take the barracks out of the girl would be one way to sum up Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment (Daughter of the Regiment), which I can’t conceive could have a more ribtickling production, more... Read more... |
