Mozart
The Marrriage of Figaro, Opera Project, Tobacco Factory, Bristol review - small is beautiful indeedMonday, 07 October 2024The Marriage of Figaro is undoubtedly one of the greatest operas ever written. Mozart’s masterpiece is a display of musical perfection that never ceases to touch the heart and stimulate the musical mind.This gripping and enormously entertaining tale... Read more... |
The Magic Flute, Opera North review - a fresh vision of Mozart’s masterpieceSaturday, 28 September 2024In an autumn season of three revivals, Opera North begin by inviting James Brining, artistic director of Leeds Playhouse, to oversee his own production from five years ago of Mozart and Emanual Schikaneder’s extraordinary musical play. It’s the... Read more... |
Bavouzet, Nemecz, McLachlan, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - finish line of a remarkable marathonSaturday, 21 September 2024“Mozart, made in Manchester”, the project to perform and record an edition of the piano concertos plus all the opera overtures, seemed a distant destination and an unlikely marathon when Manchester Camerata embarked on it eight years ago.But with... Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Komische Oper Berlin, Edinburgh International Festival 2024 review - great singing wastedTuesday, 20 August 2024I’m all in favour of the EIF taking artistic risks, and of them bringing a high-prestige international production to Edinburgh. This Marriage of Figaro from Berlin’s Komische Oper is both of those things, because it is the first production by Kirill... Read more... |
Prom 36, McGill, BBCSSO, New review - summery Shakespearean mummerySaturday, 17 August 2024My three Proms so far this year have all featured regional BBC orchestras conducted by women, all excellent, and it surely reflects well on the Proms management that they have done so much to address this gender imbalance in recent years. In last... Read more... |
Le nozze di Figaro, Garsington Opera review - fine-tuned telling it as it isSaturday, 29 June 2024“Tradition is sloppiness,” Mahler the opera conductor is credited with saying. But in the case of old master John Cox’s long-serving Garsington production of the greatest of operatic comedes, not if it’s refreshed with the subtlest insights in to... Read more... |
Die Zauberflöte, Glyndebourne review - cornucopia of visual inventiveness eclipses everything elseMonday, 20 May 2024Five years after it first clattered onto the Glyndebourne stage, André Barbe and Renaud Doucet’s visually exuberant Die Zauberflöte – featuring everything from dancing carcasses to a monster made out of blue-and-white crockery – continues to dazzle... Read more... |
Bavouzet, Manchester Camerata, Takács-Nagy, Stoller Hall, Manchester review - fun with abandonSaturday, 18 May 2024There’s a sense of cheerful abandon about Manchester Camerata’s Mozart concerts with Jean-Efflam Bavouzet and Gábor Takács-Nagy that is hard to resist.So it wasn’t exactly the programme originally advertised, and the concept of performing and... Read more... |
Sabine Devieilhe, Mathieu Pordoy, Wigmore Hall review - enchantment in Mozart and StraussTuesday, 23 April 2024Sabine Devieilhe, as with many other great sopranos, elicits much fan worship, with no less than three encores at her recent Wigmore Hall recital. In her native France, and in the rest of Europe, she has gathered ecstatic reviews for her performance... Read more... |
The Magic Flute, English National Opera review - return of an enchanted eveningThursday, 29 February 2024Trials by fire and water pale in comparison with trials by Arts Council England. English National Opera’s long torment has lately involved redundancy notices issued mid-performance and the enforcement of a sub-standard contract for chorus and... Read more... |
Così fan tutte, Welsh National Opera review - relevance reduced to irrelevanceTuesday, 27 February 2024We can’t do without Così fan tutte; it’s an irresistible masterpiece. But it’s a thorn in the flesh of modern directors, who struggle to find the "relevance" they seem to need in order to get the wretched piece on to the stage.In his new production... Read more... |
Fung, BBC Philharmonic, Weilerstein, Bridgewater Hall, Manchester review - clever and comicalMonday, 19 February 2024Placing the UK premiere of Katherine Balch’s whisper concerto (for cello and orchestra) after Haydn’s Symphony No. 100 was probably an inspired idea from the BBC Philharmonic and conductor Joshua Weilerstein.In its day, the so-called “Military”... Read more... |
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