ROH
Eugene Onegin, Royal OperaSunday, 20 December 2015
Searing emotional truth has to be at the core of any attempt to stage Tchaikovsky’s “lyrical scenes after Pushkin”. I was among the minority who thought Kasper Holten got it right, with deep knowledge of the original verse-novel, in his first... Read more... |
The Two Pigeons, Royal BalletFriday, 20 November 2015
With real live birds fluttering across the stage, and a sweetly happy ending – hurrah for young love! – Frederick Ashton's 1961 The Two Pigeons can look like mere frothy fantasy, precisely the kind of trivial, uncomplicated... Read more... |
Morgen und Abend, Royal OperaSaturday, 14 November 2015
It’s never funny like Ligeti’s Le grand macabre, though it touches on that joke apocalypse’s more nebulous soundscapes. Nor is it obviously dynamic like David Sawer’s From Morning to Midnight, with which its title is not to be confused (there are no... Read more... |
Carmen, Royal BalletWednesday, 28 October 2015
Carlos Acosta is that rare 21st-century phenomenon – a performer who has become a household name without the help of reality TV. Even people who run a mile from ballet know the story of the Havana slum boy made good through perseverance... Read more... |
Raven Girl/Connectome, Royal BalletWednesday, 07 October 2015
Wayne McGregor wasn't anyone's idea of a ballet man when he was appointed choreographer in residence at the Royal Ballet in 2007. Before then, and since, his work has been abstract, spiky, verging on dysmorphic. His interest lay not in human... Read more... |
Remembering Jon Vickers (1926-2015)Wednesday, 15 July 2015
Canadian heroic tenor Jon Vickers, who died on Friday 10 July aged 88 and whose full life took him from work on a Saskatchewan farm to the great opera houses of the world, was inimitable, terrifying and titanic. Faced with the intense flavour of... Read more... |
Falstaff, Royal OperaTuesday, 07 July 2015
It may only be a revival, but this is what the Royal Opera does best, above all in fielding a living legend of a Falstaff for Verdi's last masterpiece who’d probably be beyond the pockets of many other houses. Italian baritone, masterchef and... Read more... |
Guillaume Tell, Royal OperaTuesday, 30 June 2015
There are two operatic types who should leave Rossini’s epic swansong for the stage well alone. One would usually be a conductor who ignores many of the notes written by a master at the height of his powers, since even the least dramatic numbers... Read more... |
Pappano's Classical Voices, BBC FourMonday, 29 June 2015
Antonio Pappano, artistic director and chief conductor of the Royal Opera House, is a polymath, for he is also a brilliant and persuasive narrator of the history of music. Here he embarked on a four part history of the operatic voice, starting at... Read more... |
Don Giovanni, Royal OperaSaturday, 13 June 2015
2013 was the year that pop fans were forced to ponder the ethics of “Blurred Lines”. In 2014 classical fans followed suit, when Kasper Holten’s Royal Opera Don Giovanni unapologetically redrew the map of sexual boundaries. Suddenly Donna Anna was... Read more... |
Robbins/MacMillan Triple Bill, Royal BalletSaturday, 30 May 2015
Last night at the Royal Ballet was, emphatically, laser-free. The combination of Afternoon of a Faun (1953) and In the Night (1970) by the great American choreographer Jerome Robbins, with a repeat of Kenneth MacMillan's 1965 Song of the Earth,... Read more... |
Woolf Works, Wayne McGregor, Royal BalletTuesday, 12 May 2015
On my way to the Woolf Works opening last night, I made the mistake of reading The Waves, Virginia Woolf’s most experimental novel. It was a mistake because even the briefest immersion in Woolf’s prose was a thousand times more exhilarating than the... Read more... |
